WHEREAS provincial and municipal jurisdictions across Canada continue to struggle with waste management, specifically recycling and other waste programs. There is a strong public demand for recycling programs to divert waste materials from our landfills; however, the present programs suffer from high costs (administration, collection, sorting, etc.) and lack of markets for recovered material. Many of these programs have resorted to landfilling of “recyclable waste” in the past few years;

WHEREAS many groups and individuals continue to push our governments to reduce the use of packaging in order to reduce the waste being generated. These efforts include proposed bans on “single-use” plastics and plastic packaging in general.  However, most of these proposed bans are unlikely to result in a significant reduction in waste generation due to the positive economic advantages of using these plastic packaging materials. In short, we are not going to quit using plastic, so it would be better to find another way to recycle this waste;

WHEREAS the technology does exist to incinerate most waste (all non-metallic and glass waste) in a clean and efficient way to produce electricity. The collection and incineration of all combustible waste would virtually eliminate the need for municipal landfills. Continued use of lightweight plastics and other material would allow the existing systems for packaging, transport and protection of products to be maintained;

BE IT RESOLVED that SARM begin a dialogue with  the provincial government and the Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council to initiate a process leading to centralized collection and incineration of waste to produce electricity to help drive the provincial economy while at the same time solving many of our waste management issues.