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midweek edition WEDNESDAY, AUG. 11, 2010
Vol. 101 No. 64 • Established 1908
Uplifting magician ‘Hub’ of the wheel
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Plastics pose contaminant problems at compost site Containers accept food scraps Naoibh O’Connor Staff writer
Vancouver food scraps and plastics end up at the Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre site.
photo Dan Toulgoet
Orange rinds, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, plastic bags—one of these items doesn’t belong with the others in the yard trimmings containers of households now that food scraps are accepted for recycling. Plastic is appearing at levels exceeding what’s allowed in the city’s contract with Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre, the compost company that turns the scraps into topsoil, according to Rowan Birch. Birch, assistant city engineer in the city’s solid waste department, said there’s good participation in the threemonth old program, but plastics are a problem. “People are tending to put their food scraps in plastic bags, which of course is a
contaminant when we try to compost that material later on. I guess it’s a bit of the yuck factor. We’ve got to educate them about alternatives—how you can do it in a different way and still not get your hands messy,” he said. Plastics need to be separated manually or mechanically if they reach the recycling facility. Although some biodegradable plastics are labelled as compostible, they’re not accepted by the facility. Newsprint and brown paper bags can be used to wrap food scraps and line collection bins. Wrapping food scraps in plastic also creates high moisture and low oxygen conditions that cause strong odours, while paper absorbs moisture and allows oxygen in. See CITY on page 4
City hall and B.C. Housing pass buck on Olympic Village delay Request for non-profit operator yet to be released, 252 units remain empty Cheryl Rossi Staff writer
Four months after the organizing committee for the 2010 Winter Games returned the Olympic Village to the city, and nearly four months after city council determined half of the 252 social housing units would be subsi-
dized and half would be market rental, all 252 of these units remain empty. The city and B.C. Housing have yet to release a request for proposals for a non-profit operator or operators. Non-profits can apply to manage the social housing, the rental housing, or both. City communications told the
Courier B.C. Housing was to release the request and the city would comment after its release. B.C. Housing communications said the request for proposals is being led by the city. B.C. Housing said it hopes the request will be issued soon, but working out how to handle the rental suites, which will be leased
to tenants who work in healthcare, public safety and public education in Vancouver, is taking extra time. B.C. Housing expects non-profit applicants would have four weeks to submit proposals once the request is released. It didn’t know how long it would take to choose an operator, how long the opera-
tor would take to select tenants and when those selected could move in. Laura Stannard, a housing advocate with the Citywide Housing Coalition and housing coordinator with Jewish Family Service Agency, calls the slow turning wheels of bureaucracy criminal. See HOUSING on page 4
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