By reading their infographic…

By reading their infographic on the YORK1 website, at first, you think it’s a genius plan and that there are no cons to this. But if you read it a couple of times and figure out what they’re doing, then it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. They’re taking waste from construction sites and sorting and separating it to reuse and recycle it into wood, drywall, plastic, concrete, and recycled metal. Which isn’t bad, but what are they doing with the other products that cannot be recycled? Throwing it in landfills.

So they’re saying that at this rate, we’ll run out of landfill space by 2034. And by doing what their plan is, it’s just going to lengthen the timeline for that by a few years. It’s not like the landfills are just going to go away. Plus the extra waste they can’t recycle needs to go somewhere. Where’s it going to go? A landfill. According to the Province of Ontario’s website, it says “the subject property has been used as an approved landfill and waste processing/transfer site.” So this will also be a landfill site for all the unrecycled materials. The website also says that 6000 tonnes of non-hazardous solid waste will be transported to the facility each day. 1000 of those tonnes become residual waste. Roughly 16% of solid waste does not get recycled and just stays as waste. 1000 tonnes of waste going into a landfill each day is going to add up. So what happens when that landfill also starts to fill up? This brings me to my next point.

Their main mission is to maintain landfill space by recycling materials. But by doing this, they’re creating one of their own. One of their own that is 8 hectares in area according to the Province of Ontario website. And when that one fills up, then what are they going to do? They would have to ship all the waste after that to other landfills. Or make another one of their own. Adding onto the problem they were originally trying to fix. Short term, they aren’t going to run into too many issues because they’ll have lots of space. But after years of doing it, they’re going to realize that they’re going to need a plan to figure out what to do with this extra waste. They will probably resort to making another landfill since the property they proposed is a 35-hectare property, which makes things even worse. And they didn’t even mention how this will affect the people and surrounding communities. Particularly Dresden.

Enough about the environmental problems with this. Let’s talk about the people and the communities that will be affected. So obviously, the people of Dresden who are aware of everything going down are upset. I mean the site is only about a kilometer outside of town. Once the landfill starts filling up, you’re going to be able to smell all the waste for kilometers. When the MSW (municipal solid waste) is deposited in a landfill, it undergoes an aerobic decomposition stage when little methane is generated. Then, typically within less than a year, anaerobic conditions are established, and methane-producing bacteria decompose waste and generate methane. High levels of methane exposure can lead to mood changes, slurred speech, vision problems, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, facial flushing, and headaches. Skin or eye contact with liquid methane may cause frostbite. While there would be no liquid methane, there would still be lots of it in the air. And with all its effects on people, it also stinks as I said earlier. You wonder why people were protesting in the streets of Dresden this past weekend. But YORK1 doesn’t care, all they want is money.

In conclusion, this facility cannot be approved. YORK1 is tricking us into thinking it’s a genius idea but they’re just adding onto the problem they’re trying to fix. Dresden is a fast-growing community and we’re doing great things to improve this town and we can’t let this dump ruin all that.

LKCS Student