Outlook is Great

Rick Pederson, Superintendent of Municipal Operations for the town of Outlook Saskatchewan, fits our description of an innovator. Rick set out in 1993 to make the world work sustainably in a community of about 2000 people. Waste management up until 1993 was "in the dump". People came to the dump, materials were burnt (largely to keep the wildlife away) and that was the end of it. There was and is lots of land in the province, and dumps were dirt-cheap.

So what motivated Rick to initiate change?

The primary reason was time; he had too little of it to be spending so much of it focused on waste.

Saskatchewan passed legislation in 1986 that prohibited burning. However it took a few years before the province got around to enforcement. Rick found that his waste management activities were starting to eat into his other duties.

The solution?

Outlook implemented a user pay program whereby households paid a flat rate of $2.50 per month. For the communities outside Outlook, a $3.00 per capita per year charge was added as a utility charge.

Everything that has a market within 400 miles is recycled. Both container glass and fibreglass furnaces lie outside this boundary, so Rick came up with three very useful applications for his container glass.

One - container glass is crushed and used as the "warning layer" in municipal backfill around sewer and water pipes. Machine operators know that when they hit a layer of glass, they are down to 18" before the pipe and their effort switches from machinery to manual. This saves wear and tear on the pipe and has reduced costs arising from breaking pipe in error.

Two - irrigation pumps are common in Rick's area, so too are the rodents. Glass is broken and is layered around the wires to deter critters from lunching on the electrical cord.

Three - Outlook walks on glass, crushed container glass is used as aggregate for forming the beds for sidewalk construction.

What all this means is that every bottle collected, all 12 to 14 tonnes of Outlook's yearly generation of container glass, serves a purpose that is sustainable.

Glass Works asked Rick what else could Outlook residents do?

There was a long pause, "that's a tough question as people here are doing an excellent job."

Rick recognized that there are three levels of involvement from residents:

those that work diligently to make the best of the programme
"half time" recyclers, "if they could just make the commitment to full-time"
the odd few who fail to participate at all.

Rick's last comment was refreshing. "The garbage you generate is yours, not the town's or industries. The more you do, the more you are helping yourself to control the costs."

Vitreous Environmental Group

Vitreous is a publicly traded glass processing company located in Airdrie, Alberta. Pat Cashion, Vitreous' President, is crystal clear in his thinking of the business challenges that face a glass processor. "This is not a big margin industry." Vitreous takes post-consumer recycled glass containers, cleans and crushes them and sells the product to the fibreglass industry. "To make a reasonable dollar, we have to run a ultra lean operation in order to service a very mature industry. Fortunately we are successful at what we do. So, we are expanding to other locations."

The source of Vitreous' success? "Management is our strength. We operate a skinny business with only a 7% loss to waste."

Pat's fibreglass customers' key benefits include the opportunity to run their furnaces at cooler temperatures and to achieve better pull rates, resulting in cost savings. They require a fine grind material screened at 12 mesh, whereas glass container furnaces require a larger size, 100% screened at

11/4 inch. Quality requirements are equally stringent for Vitreous' customers as they are for the container glass industry; with metals and ceramics being their primary concerns. Contamination, even in the smallest amounts causes production and environmental problems.

Vitreous' dedication to delivering a quality product cost effectively is an excellent case study of a Canadian enterprise that helped to make NaPP a resounding success.

Glass Works looks forward to Vitreous' continued success at developing a sustainable business.

In this issue:

Glass Works is a publication of Consumers Glass