Waste management to heat up at Evergreen Environmental
- Details
- Published on Saturday, July 8, 2017
By Ken Waddell
The Neepawa Banner
A $350,000 grant for the Southwestern Manitoba Zero Waste System Pilot Project at the Evergreen Environmental Technologies site has been approved.
Jon Lewis, chairman of the South-west Regional Development Corporation says the grant comes from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Green Municipal Fund. If proven successful, this process will set the stage for possibly establishing a new Manitoba standard for waste management and waste-to-energy initiatives for the province.
The project is estimated to cost $750,000 and will involve technology being developed by Celtic Power and Machining of Rapid City, MB. The process is called gasification and has been used in some countries for decades.
Lewis says the prototype machinery will gasify 10 tonnes in an eight hour period or an estimated 20 tons per 24 hour cycle. The by-product will be cleaner recyclables and ash. The recyclables will be recovered and sold, while the ash may be used for pavement or concrete for roads. Lewis explained that the second stage will involve heat recovery and energy production.
Evergreen Environmental Technologies, which is located in the RM of Odanah is managed by Dave McDonald. McDonald says 13,000 tonnes of garbage, hog hair and construction waste per year goes into Evergreen. Thirteen thousand tonnes comes to 50 tonnes per day, based on a five day work week, so the experimental stage will not reduce landfill usage all that much initially. The hope is that this initial stage will work well enough to justify a much larger plant, which would greatly reduce the amount of waste going into the landfill.
The municipalities of Minto-Odanah, North Cypress-Langford, Elton and the towns of Minnedosa, Neepawa and Carberry are partners in Evergreen. The problem at Evergreen is that garbage volumes are far outstripping original estimates and new cells are filling far faster than anticipated.
Final approvals and official announcements are pending final financial arrangements.
