Going green in your after-work hours can be rewarding financially as well as morally
Lifestyle Essentials
by Mifi Purvis
Back to the Future
Remember the scene from Back to the Future, where Christopher Lloyd’s zany Doc Brown gases up his modified DeLorean with a few handfuls of garbage, powering it up for some serious time travel? Don’t you wish you could eschew the pricey and environmentally damaging go-juice that you now use? Think about it: in the quest for a new, cleaner source of fuel, wouldn’t it be great if we could use something we already have too much of and don’t particularly want? The big brains at the City of Edmonton certainly seem to think so, and they’re taking steps to make it happen, the most important of which will be the unveiling of the world’s first commercial gasification plant at its Integrated Waste Management Facility north of the city some time in the fall of 2011.
In the movie, Doc Brown picks through some stinky crud to feed his tank. But if you were to pick up a handful of the processed feedstock destined for the gasifier, you wouldn’t need to wash afterwards. It doesn’t look like fuel, but it doesn’t look like garbage either. “It looks like fluff and confetti,” says Jim Schubert, a professional engineer and general supervisor of conversion technologies for the City of Edmonton and the facility manager for the gasification plant.
Currently, a little more than 60 per cent of residential garbage is diverted to the city’s recycling and composting programs. But, if you’re like most people, you’ve tossed some questionable items in the blue bag, hoping that they pass muster. When the contents of blue bags and blue bins stationed outside apartments arrive at the city’s Integrated Waste Management Facility, they’re sorted. About 10 per cent of the material is mixed-grade plastics and shredded paper that doesn’t make it to recycling and is currently sent to landfill. When the gasification facility comes online, this material will be processed as feedstock. Organic material from black bags will likewise be processed for feedstock if it’s not sent to composting.
The city manages the first of a four-step process. It takes the feedstock from the blue and black bags, shreds it and removes residuals, such as rock, glass and ferrous metal and iron. (These are used later, in construction materials for example.) The rest is shredded and processed to that confetti-like consistency. “Gasifiers need a very uniform feedstock,” Schubert says. Quebec company Enerkem uses it to make synthetic gas, which it conditions and converts into liquid fuel – methanol or ethanol – to sell to oil companies.
And despite the multi-step process, the operation will create a revenue-generating product three or four times higher in value than simply burning garbage and converting the collected heat to electricity. “The gasification facility will be able to process 12.5 tonnes of waste per hour or 300 tonnes per day,” Schubert says. “That’s 100,000 tonnes of waste per year that won’t go into the landfill.”
Learn to Share
If you’re one of those folks who gets by mostly on public transport, or if you belong to a one-car family that occasionally needs use of a second, Calgary’s CATCO Car Sharing Co-op might be for you. CATCO maintains a fleet of cars, stationed strategically around town, which members can reserve. The rates include fuel and insurance, and members pay a $5 monthly charge plus usage fees that depend on the time and day. Weekday afternoons are charged at $5.25 per hour, while entire weekends can be had for $120
Try It at Home
Consumers are curious about home energy use. The best way to learn more is to hire a consultant for an audit. But a cool first step is CanmetENERGY’s software analysis. Visit canmetenergy-canmetenergie.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca and navigate to Software Tools, then select HOT2XP. Cost: $0 | Higher Calibre CoatGood news, home renovation junkies. Those half-used cans of latex paint that you dropped off at the eco-centre aren’t going to waste. Instead, they’re being collected by Calibre Environmental Ltd., a Calgary company that has been collecting, diverting and recycling latex paint since 2003. “We sort it, and 80 per cent of it goes to the production floor where we make 14 colours,” says partner Dean Brawn. It’s a green solution, he says, “that feels good on your wallet too.” A gallon of Calibre’s Ecocoat costs about $15, half the price of new latex |
Don’t Pull the Plug You paid good money to heat that water. Why would you let heat – and your cash – drain away? That’s the question that David Morrow of Hydraft Development Services has been working on since 1995. A professional engineer with expertise in heat transfer, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, Morrow can outfit a house with heat recovery technology that will collect approximately 65 per cent of the heat that drains away from your dishwasher and shower. The system, which pays for itself in five to seven years, costs as little as $500 | Waste Not, Want StuffDavid Bruns and his wife Sherry Galan opened their Edmonton building salvage spot, Home Reusables, three years ago. “We recover and sell anything that normally comes attached or screwed into a house,” he says, noting that he does a particularly lively business in new and used windows, cabinets, doors, flooring and lighting. Before a home is demolished, the owner will call Bruns, who strips the place of anything salvageable, while contractors who’ve ordered the wrong size window or wrong colour of door will also sell their new goods to Bruns. “We retail it for about 50 per cent of what it costs new.” Consumers can pick up cabinetry or doors in keeping with the age and style of their home. Cost of a new universal door: $20, less than half the standard retail price |
Follow Alberta Venture On: