Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Your lifestyle is making blue box recycling unsustainable

By Emily Chung, CBC News Ottawa, March 27, 2018

Reduce, Reuse and Rethink is a CBC News series about recycling. We're exploring why our communities are at a turning point and exploring ways to recycle better. You can be part of the conversation by joining our Facebook group.

Do you read your news online? Enjoy takeout? Live in an apartment?

Our changing lifestyles over the past few decades have dramatically altered the types of materials we put in blue bins.

And that's led to flatlining recycling rates and ballooning costs for municipalities across Canada that are struggling to cope with the changes.

Dispute over traffic signal highlights safety riddle facing suburbs

By Laura Osman, CBC News Ottawa, March 27, 2018

Which came first, the traffic light or the bus stop? At one intersection in Ottawa's Blossom Park neighbourhood, the answer is neither, and that's why people living there won't be crossing the road any time soon.

It's a chicken-and-egg conundrum that highlights the difficulties facing growing suburban communities when it comes to traffic safety, and neither residents nor their city councillors seem to have a solution to the riddle.

Coun. Diane Deans wants a developer to install traffic lights at Lester Road and Meandering Brook Drive, where Valecraft Homes is building a 156-unit subdivision.

"Every community deserves to have safety, and every community deserves to be properly served by public transit," Deans said Tuesday.

Reevely: Ontario's Green party is on the verge of a breakthrough, as usual

By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, March 26, 2018

If Ontario’s Greens break through to elect their first legislator this spring, it’ll be in a riding like Ottawa Centre, their leader Mike Schreiner said on a pre-election swing through Eastern Ontario Monday.

“The ridings where we feel the strongest are ones held by a Liberal, or one of the new ones where there’s no incumbent,” he said. “And then if it has a university community … where there’s a strong sense of community and where there’s a strong local business presence. They really like the Green party’s approach to re-localizing the economy, supporting local businesses, supporting family businesses and entrepreneurship.”

Squirrel nest in your attic? Here's why city squirrels are harder to scare away

By the Ottawa Citizen, March 27, 2018

Hear scratching, scurrying or a pitter patter in your attic?

At this time of year, that could be a squirrel mom, trying to keep her nest of brand new babies warm.  Sean Robertson, President of Get ‘Em Out Wildlife Control in Ottawa tells us why city squirrels are tricky to get rid off, what works and what doesn’t.

“People will think ‘Oh, okay, I have a squirrel hole, might as well close that hole off and that will be the end of it.’ But the problem with that, is you are either going to lock mom away from her babies and the babies are going to die inside, or mom is going to chew apart every piece of your roof to get back to those babies.”

City hall blog: Heat will be on households to recycle if city changes garbage rules

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, March 27, 2018

It’s becoming more difficult for anyone around city hall to deny that the rules for garbage pickup will change in the coming years.

“At this point, nothing is ruled out, nothing is ruled in,” Coun. David Chernushenko, the environment chair on council, said this week.

“I think with the lay of the land changing so dramatically provincially, I think we’ll want to look at everything from clear bags to tags to a very, very long list, but no one should read into that that the city or council wants to pick any one of those, but rather what’s the most effective tool to get us to the diversion targets that we want and meet our greenhouse gas emission targets as well?”

Lanark medical officer of health backs compromise on Almonte recreational trail

By Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen, March 27, 2018

Lanark’s Medical Officer of Health has come out in favour of a paved trail through Almonte with a ban on motorized vehicles such as snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles.

In a letter to Lanark County Council dated March 21, Dr. Paula J. Stewart writes she “strongly support(s)” the proposal from Mississippi Mills Council to keep the trail motor-free.

“A paved trail is the preferred surface for the more vulnerable population (better for cycling, wheelchairs, walkers, strollers, people with varying physical and mental abilities),” writes Stewart, whose own daughter has physical and intellectual disabilities and has special permission to ride her adult tricycle on the sidewalks in Perth.

City pressed to allow compostable coffee pods in green bin

By Laura Osman, CBC News Ottawa, March 26, 2018

Java lovers in Ottawa can't dump their compostable coffee pods in the green bin, but Coun. David Chernushenko wants to revisit that policy.

City staff will study the possibility of including compostable plastics such as certain coffee pods and utensils in its recycling contract with Orgaworld, currently being renegotiated, after the environment and climate protection committee approved Chernushenko's motion Monday.

The new contract will also allow plastic bags and dog waste, a change the city hopes will encourage more residents to use their green bins for kitchen scraps and other compostable matter.

Fight brewing over Ottawa green bins and banned coffee pods

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, March 23, 2018 A company that produces compostable coffee pods received a rude awakening last week after learning that Ottawa plans to keep banning the pods from city green bins.

“We were furious,” says John Pigott, chief executive officer of Club Coffee.

The city announced last week it has restructured its green-bin contract with Orgaworld to allow plastic bags and dog feces to be included in the organic waste Ottawans send to a plant in rural south Ottawa.

Today's letters: Recycling is in the bag

By Barry Wellar and others, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, March 24, 2018

Garbage in, garbage out

Re: Waste contract big risk, city told, March 21.

Two words taxpayers never want to hear describing a city contract are: “severe ambiguity.” It is downright shocking to see them as the opening words in a disturbing news story about the City of Ottawa’s multi-million-dollar arrangement with Orgaworld to divert organic waste from the Trail Road dump to a processing facility on Hawthorne Road.

(...)Stop picking on cyclists

Re: Fix the roads, stop catering to cyclists, March 21.

As I cycled 13 kilometres to my office this morning, I contemplated the letter from my fellow grandparents who reside in rural Ottawa. Their views are in line with others, which seem to be premised on the notion that people who get around under their own steam must be subversive or something. I am at a loss to understand their arguments.

Native species flex their mussels in battle against zebra invasion

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, March 23, 2018

There’s good news for lakes and rivers despite the wave of zebra mussels across Eastern Ontario: Native mussels that are an important part of our fresh waters are fighting back.

In some cases, they smother their attackers to death while surviving themselves. But their ability to do this depends on having the right conditions — specifically, the right kind of sediment.

“There is some clear evidence along the Rideau River of refugia for native freshwater mussels against zebra mussels, and this is a really neat story,” scientist André Martel said in an email to this newspaper Friday. (Refugia is the scientific term for a place where species survive hard times.)

NOTEBOOK: LRT will bring changes, but will it improve bus service for Stittsville?

By Glen Gower, StittsvilleCentral, March 22, 2018

I’m just getting home from tonight’s OC Transpo open house at the GRC. My overwhelming impression: When LRT arrives this fall it will be a big change, but the impact on Stittsville transit service will be minimal.

We heard that when LRT service starts later this year (likely late November), bus service to Stittsville won’t be any more frequent, nor will the buses be any less crowded than they are now. Schedules should be slightly more reliable because buses won’t have to traverse across downtown, so there’s less chance that congestion, traffic lights, or weather can cause delays. The big change that riders will notice is the transfer point at Tunney’s Pasture from bus to rail.

City could be encouraged to divert diapers from dump, but continues ban for green bin

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, March 21, 2018

The city doesn’t want dirty diapers in its green bin program, but in a few years it might not have a choice.

The city is in the midst of amending its contract with Orgaworld — the company responsible for handling Ottawa’s compost — and plans on keeping diapers and other sanitary products out of the green bin. But that possibly doesn’t align with provincial plans, with Ontario eying a move to get diapers out of the regular waste stream as early as 2022.

The city says diapers belong in the dump on Trail Road, not in Orgaworld’s composting plant in rural south Ottawa.

For that reason, council next week will vote on a revised contract with Orgaworld that will continue the diaper ban. The new deal, however, would add dog waste and plastic bags as approved items for the green bin. Orgaworld is agreeing to $9.4 million in facility upgrades, including nearly $4 million in work to reduce odours.