Nussbaum: Here's why plastic bags shouldn't be in the green bin

By Tobi Nussbaum, Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 2018

The decision made last week at Ottawa council to allow plastic bags in the composting stream is a short-sighted one on which I and two of my colleagues (councillors Jeff Leiper and Catherine McKenney) dissented.

Increasingly as a society, we are recognizing the costs of single-use plastic bags. At the production end, plastic bags are a non-renewable, petroleum-based product that take energy to produce – 12 million barrels’ worth worldwide each year. On the consumption side, these bags take up space in our increasingly costly landfill sites – if we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, they end up in other even less desirable places. Only recently, a study in Scientific Reports outlined how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has grown to over three times the size of continental France, weighing in at a staggering 80,000 metric tons.

Small pets can ride on OC Transpo starting Monday

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 2018

Monday is your pet’s first chance to ride on OC Transpo, but there are some conditions.

You can bring your pet on board if it is in a crate or carrying case, and the crate can sit on your lap.

Transpo checked around 18 transit systems in North America and found all but one allowed pets. The exception: Gatineau.

Reevely: Hydro One will keep running its U.S. coal plant indefinitely, it tells American regulators

By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 2018

The Washington power company Hydro One is buying will be ready to close its huge coal-fired generating station ahead of schedule, thanks to conditions put on the corporate merger by state regulators there.

Not that we actually plan to do that, the company is telling other regulators in Montana, where the huge coal-fired generating station in question employs hundreds of people. We’ll be in the coal business for a good long time yet.

Hydro One, in which the Ontario government now owns a big minority stake, is still working on its purchase of Avista, a private power utility based in Spokane. The $6.7-billion deal, which Hydro One announced in July, includes a 15 per cent share in two of the four generating units in a coal plant in Colstrip, Montana, one of the biggest in the western United States. Avista gets most of its electricity from hydro dams and gas but uses the Colstrip plant when demand for power is high and water levels at its dams are low.

COMMENT: ReStore brings social and environmental benefits to the community

By Kim Dingwall, StittsvilleCentral, March 31, 2018

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Habitat for Humanity’s new ReStore on Iber Road opens on Saturday, April 7 and it will be the organization’s third location in Ottawa.  The store accepts donation of new and gently used items and salvageable building materials, then resells them to the public at a reduced cost.  Kim Dingwall is a Stittsville resident and Habitat for Humanity volunteer, so we asked her to share why she’s looking forward to helping out at the new location.)

As soon as I heard about the new Iber Road Restore location I drove right over. It wasn’t open and I couldn’t see very much through the windows but I knew I had to be there and it had to be often. It’s just so handy and a great “garage sale”. I’ve volunteered with Habitat for Humanity before and I decided quickly to commit again for personal and business reasons.

Ottawa residents finding ticks during winter on them and their pets

By Joanne Schnurr, CTV News Ottawa, March 30, 2018 If you're heading out for a hike this long weekend, you may want to spray yourself with a dose of DEET. No, not for mosquitoes but ticks. Those nasty bugsare proving resilient evenin our cold Canadian winters.  Several folks in our region have reported coming home from a winter walk in the woods and finding a tick attached to their dog or themselves.
Black-legged tick.

Black-legged tick.

It appears tick season now is pretty much every season.

Eastern Ontario recycling heading to the landfill

By CBC News Ottawa, March 31, 2018

The Township of North Glengarry, Ont., is having to send some of its recyclable materials to the landfill as Chinese restrictions on foreign waste have closed a market for resale and slowed the processing of recyclables.

Nearly half the world's recyclables were being to sent to China, when China decided to crack down on imports of four classes of recycled materials, including plastics and unsorted paper.

Although the ban didn't take full effect until Dec. 31, 2017, many Chinese companies stopped accepting foreign recycling materials months earlier, leaving some Canadian cities with stockpiles of flattened cardboard and crushed plastic without anywhere to send it.

Gatineau bus riders slightly happier with city's transit service

By CBC News Ottawa, March 31, 2018

Gatineau bus riders are slightly happier with the city's transit service than they were two years ago, according to a recent survey.

The overall satisfaction rate with Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO) rose from 6.5 points out of 10 in 2016 to seven out of 10 last year, according to the survey conducted by Léger on behalf of the transit company.

The survey — which provided rates for each of the city's districts — found that Aylmer residents were the least satisfied with the transit service, where satisfaction rates barely rose from 6.2 to 6.3.

Doucet: In Cape Breton, we don't suete the small stuff, but we do worry about climate change

By Clive Doucet, Ottawa Citizen, March 30, 2018

The windiest place in Canada that’s not on a mountain top is Grand Étang, Nova Scotia.

It’s not something I was really aware of until I built my own house in the village. Part of growing up here was the great south east storms (les suetes) which roll in over the Cape Breton Highlands and blow down everything that isn’t nailed to the earth.

My grandfather had a “suete” rope attached to an iron ring by the barn door and the house porch at the other end. He needed this rope so he wouldn’t get blown off his feet walking from the house to the barn to do chores. This was life in Grand Etang and has been forever.

The big suete winds were not something that bothered me, but things have changed.

Dawson: No green bins? Little recycling? What the heck, Ottawa

By Tyler Dawson, Ottawa Citizen, March 31, 2018

The under-use of the green bin program in Ottawa is nothing short of bizarre. It seems either people can’t handle a little grossness or haven’t bothered to look on the city’s website to figure out what can go in the bin and what cannot.

And so, the city is going to allow folks to put plastic bags in the bin to help with the mess, and ideally to encourage more folks to use the bins. At the moment, only 51 per cent of us participate. 

This is a city that mostly elected Liberal politicians, who are strident about the environment to the point of ostentatiousness, and who are flogging taxes to help the environment. Yet people in Ottawa won’t use their green bins? It’s all the same environmentalism.

Carlsbad Springs area poised to get $200,000 annually for hosting dump and recycling centre

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, March 31, 2018

The Carlsbad Springs area is poised to get $200,000 annually for the next 30 years for having a new dump and recycling facility near the east-Ottawa village, but the money isn’t quelling concerns in the community about potential health impacts.

A planning report recommending land-use changes to allow the Capital Region Resource and Recovery Centre, a joint venture between Taggart Investments and Miller Waste Systems, is going through the council approval process, although local politicians can’t do much about the project at this point. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change approved the waste facility last year, much to the disappointment of many in the community who don’t want a garbage facility to set up shop.

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