Metro Vancouver fined private and municipal trash haulers more than $450,000 last year for having forbidden recyclables in their loads, documents obtained through access-to-information laws show.

The surcharges are meant to be a deterrent to haulers dumping items for which there are recycling programs, including corrugated cardboard, yard trimmings and electronics. It is considered haulers’ responsibility to deal with their customers to keep banned items out of the waste stream.

Documents released to The Vancouver Sun, over the objection of several haulers, show that Metro Vancouver issued $383,369 in fines last year at regional waste facilities, and $74,298 at the City of Vancouver’s transfer station and landfill in Burns Bog in Delta.

Just eight large haulers were responsible for about $315,000 or 82 per cent of the total surcharge fines levied by Metro against 100 companies and agencies involving both residential and commercial trash in 2013. The eight had violation rates of four to seven per cent.

Waste Management topped the list at $82,437, followed by Smithrite Disposal at $75,083; Northwest Waste $38,596, BFI Canada (Progressive Waste) $37,854, Super Save Disposal $34,509, Maple Leaf Disposal $17,891, City of Burnaby $17,443, and Waste Control Services $11,625.

Residential drop-offs, typically pickup trucks and vans, were responsible for $22,511 in surcharges.

At City of Vancouver waste facilities, Smithrite Disposal topped the list at $19,320, followed by Waste Management at $16,733, and Super Save Disposal at $10,506.

Ralph McRae, chairman of Northwest Waste, one of the companies slapped with the surcharges, argued Metro’s fines “are calculated and imposed in a completely illegal and unscientific manner” and that the system has “no objective or fair method of determining compliance.”

McRae said inspectors “eyeball” garbage from a distance and make a percentage calculation if there is a violation, adding that “because Metro controls the only local disposal facilities ... they can act as judge, jury and executioner, with impunity.”

Northwest Waste disputed the system of fines several years ago without success, he said. “We sent in the photos and our arguments against the penalties. Metro’s response was to threaten to cut off our disposal privileges if we pressed our case.”

McRae said Northwest works with its customers to reduce the amount of recyclables in the garbage but it’s not an easy task.

“Although we and our competitors are keenly motivated to encourage recycling, one of our trucks contains the contents of 50 or more customers when it dumps at one of Metro’s regional facilities. It is impossible for us to fully inspect each closed bin before tipping it.”

Paul Henderson, Metro Vancouver’s general manager of solid waste services, said that photos are taken of all loads where a fine is levied, and copies supplied to haulers upon request. There were about 18 disputes from 2010 to 2012; about half the fines were reversed by a senior staff member.

He described the ban program “as one of the most comprehensive in North America with seven inspectors participating in the program and over 150,000 loads per year.” Metro Vancouver is working with the Waste Management Association of B.C. to improve the program, including an inspection program manual that details the process for waste haulers, and providing incentives to haulers for implementing source separation programs for commercial customers.

The Sun visited the Wastech-managed Coquitlam waste transfer station on United Boulevard and accompanied Deane Hackett — an inspector with Metro Vancouver contractor, Southern Cross Holdings Ltd. — while she checked for banned items in loads dumped within the cavernous “tipping floor.”

Crows flew over and strutted around for scraps while a bulldozer pushed the garbage (155,000 tonnes last year, mostly from the Tri-Cities) through a hopper into a compactor and into bales for delivery to the City of Vancouver landfill in Delta, the Cache Creek landfill, or the Burnaby waste-to-energy incinerator.

“Watch out, it’s slippery,” Hackett warned of the black goo formed from water and squished garbage on the floor.

As vehicles arrive at the station, a spotter asked the drivers what they are carrying in hopes of diverting any loads of banned items. Once they continued into the building and backed up for unloading, Hackett positioned herself about three metres away for safety reasons wearing a white hard hat and yellow vest.

Some are zero-tolerance “prohibited items,” such as batteries, electronics, gypsum drywall, paint and tires; even one item results in a minimum $50 fine.

The other category is for “banned items,” including corrugated cardboard, recyclable paper, green waste, glass and metal containers, plastics, and beverage containers except for milk cartons. Where these items represent more than five per cent of the load by volume the fine is 50 per cent of the tipping fee — and that can be substantial.

Hackett writes a Super Save Disposal truck a fine for 50 per cent of its $876.96 tipping fee for a cardboard violation.

Nearby, when three men start unloading trash that includes cardboard, she is quick to cut them off, saying that it can be dropped off for recycling for free elsewhere on the 2.6-hectare site and that if they put it back in the truck they’ll avoid a fine.

For every load fined, recyclable items in about three other loads are removed by the hauler and not subject to fines.

Minutes later, another man drops off wood that exceeds 2.5 metres, a length that can play havoc with the compactor. He puts it back on the pickup to avoid a $50 fine. In 2015, Metro Vancouver will implement a ban on the disposal of clean wood not contaminated by paints, stains or glues.

Occasionally, trash haulers, especially individuals with residential trash, can became angry and verbally abusive, to the point they are told not to return until setting up a meeting to prove they have their emotions under control. “Sometimes it’s the customers who get banned,” Hackett confirmed.

She makes her determinations based largely on what she sees, although her ears have become attuned to the sound of recyclable bottles or cans from inside a black garbage. “I can hear them ‘ting, ting, ting,’” she said.

Metro Vancouver’s latest waste composition report in 2013 found that compostable organics comprised 36.2 per cent of trash, followed by plastics at 14.4 per cent, and paper at 13.6 per cent, which suggests that the number of fines would be much higher if inspectors could see everything in a load. In Nova Scotia, some municipalities have mandated the use only of clear garbage bags for residences for just that reason.

While McRae said Northwest takes all its waste to facilities within Metro Vancouver, an increasing number of waste companies are choosing to haul outside the region to private waste-transfer stations in Abbotsford, where their trash is transferred to rail facilities in Sumas, Wash., and hauled to a private landfill in the arid Columbia River region.

These companies are drawn mainly by cheaper tipping fees — an estimated $70 a tonne in Abbotsford versus $108 in Metro Vancouver. In the process, they also skirt the surcharge fines designed to encourage recycling, Metro Vancouver asserts.

BFI district manager Grant Hankins confirmed that his company purchased an existing waste transfer station in 2010.

“We’re not doing anything illegal,” he said, noting that the facility is used by haulers working close enough to make the distance economically feasible. “This is a revenue issue for Metro Vancouver, a hidden tax that they want their hands and controls on.”

The BFI/Progressive waste-transfer facility is located on Industrial Avenue, just west of Highway 11 near the border, while Chilliwack-based First Class Waste/Alpine Valley Disposal has an operation nearby on Coutts Way.

As for the fines Hankins said: “We collect hundreds of bins per day. We rely on our customers to be as diligent as possible, to separate recyclables form the waste stream. We can’t police it. There’s no way to see inside a black bag or the bottom of a bin. And it’s impossible to go back and find the offending customer.”

Metro Vancouver estimates about 160,000 tonnes of waste will be shipped south through Abbotsford into Washington in 2014 — about 100,000 tonnes of that, or 10,000 truck loads, from Metro Vancouver, up from 50,000 tonnes in 2012. This represents about 20 per cent of the commercial trash collected in the region this year and a loss of about $11 million in tipping fees, the region estimates.

“It’s getting worse each year,” Henderson said. “It’s putting our entire sold-waste management plan in jeopardy.”

Critics counter that Metro Vancouver wants a monopoly to ensure enough waste stays in the region to feed a planned $470-million waste-to-energy project.

Waste Management spokesperson Robin Freedman said her company is the region’s largest hauler, so it’s understandable they have more fines. Waste Management is making progress (the company had fines of $95,915 in 2012) and continues to “work with our drivers to educate them about contamination and they, in turn, work to educate our customers.”

The list of prohibited items has grown steadily since 1997, and also includes paint, gypsum, oil, tires, metal appliances, mattresses, plastic, paper, and blue-box recyclables, with organics expected to be included in 2015.

Inspections are conducted on about 20 per cent of loads arriving at solid-waste facilities.

Metro Vancouver has been waiting since last October for Environment Minister Mary Polak to approve Bylaw 280, which would require that garbage generated in Metro Vancouver be processed at regional facilities.

Paul Richard, chair of environmental protection technology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has written Polak in support of the bylaw, warning that “the full integrity of the recycling system, from source separation, producer responsibility, organics collection, and other initiatives” stands to be compromised.

McRae opposes Bylaw 280, wants to open a “mixed-waste-material recovery facility” to process waste from the region, and has suggested that the bylaw could be challenged in the courts if endorsed by the province.

lpynn@vancouversun.com

Follow me: @LPynn