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Powered by recycling. Literally!

We’ve figured out how to turn trash into treasure. Not the wooden chest of gold coins-type treasure, but treasure for our modern world: clean energy. The evidence: my city, the city of Toronto, has a new garbage truck with an engine (a Cummins Westport ISL G) that’s capable of running on compressed natural gas, including biogas. And where are they planning to get that source of biogas? From composting operations that handle the green bin waste (kitchen waste) removed from Toronto curbsides by… Toronto garbage trucks.

“Our two green bin processing facilities have the potential to produce enough natural gas to take our entire fleet of 300 waste trucks off diesel,” says Geoff Rathbone, the City of Toronto’s General Manager of Solid Waste Management Services. “Creating natural gas from kitchen waste will be the first operation of its kind in North America.”

Replacing diesel trucks with lower-emission biogas trucks is all a pilot project at this point, but the city is motivated: its Green Fleet Plan calls for new medium and heavy-duty trucks in order to reduce fuel consumption, fuel costs, smog and greenhouse-gas pollutants. For more information on the plan, click here.

Next, let’s hope that Toronto and other municipalities tackle incineration to deal with all that garbage waste that cannot be composted or recycled. Burning this material generates energy as well, and the processes can be controlled in a way that doesn’t contaminate the environment (read about it here). That would save us a heck of a lot of money (and, of course, climate-impacting CO2) compared to trucking garbage to landfills. C’mon Canada, Japan is doing it, Denmark is doing it… we can do it!

Congrats to Via Rail. Apparently VIA has cut fuel consumption by 25 per per passenger kilometre, and greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent since 1990. VIA is now working on equipment and operations upgrades in an effort to further reduce its ecological footprint. That’s good news! (OK, a high-speed electric rail line would be really good news!)

Too bad other train networks don’t have good news to share. Toronto’s new Go train network to Georgetown will likely be diesel instead of oh-so-21st century electric. (OK, many countries had electric trains well before the millennium.)  Actually, they’ll be a type of diesel that doesn’t even exist yet. For some reason it’s better to expect that new diesel technology (I know that’s not an oxymoron, but it sounds like it) to materialize than use tried-and-true electric trains. Don’t get me wrong. Metrolinx is going to study electric. Oh, and they’re going to monitor the air quality. Terrific! Or, they could just do the right thing in the first place, and bring in electrically powered trains with energy offset by Bullfrog power. That’d make a Go train that deserves to be painted green.