Toronto's green dilemma: coping with its own trash

This is a city that likes to think of itself as green. The city's fashionable mayor, David Miller, is a "progressive" on every issue, and was given the green stamp of approval in a recent article in Vanity Fair. But Canada's largest city has a dirty secret: It ships its raw garbage to another country, the United States.

Every day as many as 90 tractor trailers leave from seven different transfer stations, carrying Toronto's garbage to a dump in Carleton, Mich. Each truckload carries 73,000 pounds of household and commercial waste to a landfill 265 miles away.

And it isn't just garbage that heads to the US. Sewage sludge, the stuff that is left behind after purification, also heads to the same dump in Michigan, as many as 15 truckloads every day. But as of Tuesday, the Michigan dump is refusing to take Toronto's sewage sludge. Officials have found alternate locations for half the sludge, but are still looking for a place to send the other half.

"We've created a point of friction with an important neighbor. It's damaging to our reputation in Michigan. It's horrible. Americans are justifiably shocked," says Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, an independent environmental watchdog group. The cost to Toronto of shipping 600,000 metric tons of garbage to Michigan is C$41.5 million (US $47 million), a year.

"The trip takes 12 to 13 hours there and back. Most days they X-ray the load at the border," says a driver waiting to clear the inspection station at the Dufferin Transfer Station at the northern limits of Toronto.

The driver makes the trip five days a week. He doesn't want to be identified and almost seems embarrassed at what he does for a living.

"It's a job," he shrugs.

He's not the only one who is embarrassed. Local politicians and environmentalists say they are distraught over Toronto's garbage crisis. The last landfill just north of the city was closed in 2002 by the provincial government, even though it wasn't full, says Mr. Miller. Local opposition in surrounding municipalities won't let Toronto open another one. In fact, other cities in the Greater Toronto Region also ship garbage to Michigan.

"It's nasty and not a solution at all, but a coverup for the overall incompetence of Toronto to cope [with its garbage]. It's embarrassing. It's not pleasant, but mature societies have to deal with these things," says Mr. Adams.

But Toronto's garbage situation used to be even worse. Three years ago there were 145 tractor trailers a day carrying garbage to Michigan until the city stepped up its recycling program.

"Forty percent of our waste is diverted," says Richard Butts, who is in charge of garbage for Toronto with the title of general manager, solid waste management. "It's the most successful urban recycling program in North America."

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