[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by GGG

On what grounds is it better for the environment?

I should add that I'm not inherently against doing it. I just want to see a decision record from the city showing the basis for this decision and that it is economicly justifiable based on whole lifecycle costs and the assumptions that went it to it.

It's likely not much better for the environment today, but it will help down the road.

http://www.owma.org/Portals/2/Cover_...ber%202015.pdf

Once buried, organic wastes start decaying and generating methane in a

matter of days, and the decay process and its emissions continue for decades. This is why, in any given

year, the landfill gas methane emitted by Ontario landfills is almost all the result of waste that was

generated and landfilled in years gone by.

By 2013, the waste already deposited in Ontario’s landfills,

much of it organic, generated 12.3 million tonnes CO2eq of methane.

If no more organic waste were added to Ontario’s landfills, the methane emissions from the “waste-inplace”

would slowly subside, dropping by 50% about every 15 years. By 2030, pre-capture emissions

would be less than 6 Mt CO

2eq, and by 2050 emissions would be down to about 2 Mt CO2eq. However,

for the past ten years, landfill gas emissions have been fairly constant; there is enough fresh organic

material in the material landfilled every year in Ontario (about six million tonnes per year, some of

which is paper and organic waste) to offset the declining emissions from the older waste-in-place.