Policies - Waste Management

Solid Waste Disposal — Solid Waste Reduction

Waste Management – Solid Waste Disposal

Reviewed: November 2022
Approved: 12 February 2023

Whereas:

Poorly managed solid waste accumulates in local bodies of water, forests and other environments, degrading our ecosystems and negatively impacting human health¹;
Whereas the Brady landfill is Manitoba’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses²;
In Manitoba, between 40-60% of solid waste is organic waste^{3, 4};
It is better for soil quality, and reduces both the cost to the city as well as the quantity of solid waste, to mow leaves into the soil rather than collect them as waste^{5, 6, 7, 8, 9};
Reducing consumption is an important element of substantially reducing waste;
The difficulty in getting electronics, large appliances and machinery repaired often results in consumers simply discarding the product and purchasing new;
Right to Repair legislation is increasingly adopted across the United States and Europe^{10, 11, 12};
The north end sewage plant is the biggest single source of pollution into lake Winnipeg¹³;
The cost of dumping waste in Manitoba landfills is so low that is not adequate incentive to encourage large companies to sort waste¹⁴;
Winnipeg is the largest city in Canada without municipal compost collection¹⁵;
Approximately two thirds of a city’s waste is generated by the commercial sector¹⁶; and
Most waste diversion in Manitoba applies to the residential sector, with little regulation of industry, commercial and institutional sectors¹⁷;

Be It Resolved:

The Green Party of Manitoba supports the following waste reduction and management measures:

Implementing province-wide compost collection;
Creating incentives to encourage recycling and waste diversion, including;
- Incentives for enterprises that repair, reuse, and repurpose items that would otherwise be garbage; and
- Deposit return system for specified items, such as single-use containers.
Accelerating regulations to ban non-essential, single-use plastics, and expand the list of items to be banned;
Increasing fines for illegal dumping;
Requiring communities to stop raking and bagging leaves, and instead to mulch leaves into lawns;
Implementing mandatory sorting of waste, compostable material and recyclables for all government departments and agencies, industry and corporations, across the province, with meaningful fines in place to address non-compliance;
Requiring that all plastic packaging contain at least 50% recycled content by 2030 and support the shift to reusable products and packaging by (A) adjusting provincial procurement practices and supporting municipalities that adopt equivalent or better reuse standards; and (B) introducing targets for refillable beverage containers;
Prioritizing and accelerating the upgrade of the Winnipeg North End Sewage Treatment Plant;
Supporting consumers in maintaining their electronics, large appliances and machinery, and being able to access cost-effective repairs to those items, by introducing Right to Repair legislation, including:
- The availability of parts at reasonable prices;
- Provision of free and publicly available service manuals;
- Publicly available repair information such as software tools and schematics;
- Repairability labeling to inform consumers of the likely lifetime and fixability of the product; and
- Enforcing repairable designs (e.g., replaceable batteries, long-term software support, etc).

References

Waste Management – Solid Waste Reduction

Approved: 2017
Revised: 2019

Whereas:

Waste reduction measures in Manitoba are inadequate, given the low overall waste diversion rates (26% of residential and 13% ICI in 2016), the inadequate incentives to households and businesses for diverting waste from landfills and, for many items diverted from the landfill, the lack of local opportunities for recycling them into reusable products;
Manitoba has a multitude of product-specific programs for diverting waste , but lacks an overarching vision and firm goals;

Manitoba has no comprehensive system of household and commercial organic waste pickup and composting for organics which results in methane gas emissions at landfills that contribute to climate change; and
Waste reduction programs contribute to reducing climate change , protecting health, creating green jobs and. result in cost savings in the long term;

Be it Resolved:

The Green Party of Manitoba supports the development of a maximum waste diversion program for the province, with the goal of zero waste, that includes the following initiatives:

Implementing a system of high environmental handling fees and adequate rebates to consumers on products and packaging for returning recyclable items;
Implementing a province-wide municipal organics diversion programs from both the residential and the Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (ICI) sectors;
Requiring the PROs to include the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors in their recycling programs;
Requiring, through regulation and other means, the implementation of incentives and disincentives for both the residential and commercial sectors to minimize waste disposal;
Setting the tipping fees and WRARS levy for landfill sites higher than the fees charged by material recovery facilities for accepting recyclable materials, so as to incent the ICI sector and municipalities to recycle; and
Identifying those materials that cannot be recycled and work towards banning them from use by consumers.