For months, Coun. Leanne Piper has been routinely voting against any demolition application which comes before council because she is concerned about the amount of resulting debris going to landfill.
So Monday night she decided to do something about it.
Piper floated, and got approved, a motion that the city investigate its authority to require that all recyclable construction and demolition waste be diverted from landfill.
“It’s astonishing really that we’re still landfilling usable materials,” Piper said in an interview after the council meeting, noting some estimates that 30 per cent of materials in landfills are from construction or demolition.
“We’re landfilling entire buildings.”
Piper said she was spurred to consider the motion in the spring after council saw a rash of demolition applications, typically from property owners seeking permission to demolish otherwise-sound houses to erect new, larger ones in their place.
“The (applications) that were coming forward were not termite-infested, mouldy, fire-damaged buildings,” she said. “They were perfectly viable 1950s and ’60s homes.”
Her motion to refer the matter to the planning and building, engineering and environment committee passed 11-1, with only Coun. Cam Guthrie voting against it.
“There’s a part of it that’s a little nanny state-ish,” Guthrie said after the meeting. “It’s a form of intrusion I don’t feel is necessary.
“It’s another piece of red tape property owners don’t need to deal with,” Guthrie said.
Piper stressed her motion will simply see the city investigate whether it has the authority to mandate recycling of building materials.
“If the answer is we don’t have the authority I probably won’t take it any further,” she said. “But if we do have the authority it’s something we should be considering.
“In our households we’re required to divert as much as possible from landfill,” Piper added. “This is just on a larger scale.”
But Guthrie countered the initiative will increase the cost of demolition and construction, arguing it could be redundant.
“Property owners are already going this way anyway,” he said. “People are already doing this on their own.”
Piper didn’t dispute many property owners and construction firms are already recycling what they can, but suggested that proves her point there is merit in diverting the materials from landfill.
“Bulldozing and rebuilding is seen as cheap, but it ignores that there’s a real cost to landfilling and that cost should be borne by the property owners and not by the City of Guelph,” she noted.
by Scott Tracey, Guelph Mercury