Despite some rain in August, Level 2 Drought for the Otonabee Watershed still persists, and 20% water conservation is encouraged. For more details please refer to the news release and presentation by Otonabee Region Conservation Authority.
Some helpful resources include:
OMAFRA Dry Conditions and Low Water
MOECC Green Facts – Managing your water well in times of water shortage
Up on the third floor of the century-old Quaker Oats plant, Stephen Loch points out a set of doors next to a panel of high-tech measuring devices.
This is the brain of Quaker’s waste measurement and control system. Steel “containment vessels” brought from production lines two floors below hold waste material from a run of Quaker Oats, granola bars or whatever was being produced.
Each container has an RFID tag, a radio-frequency identification device similar to those inserted under the skin of cats and dogs.
When the doors open the container is pushed into a set of arms, picked up and weighed. The measuring device records the weight and reads a radio signal from the tag that identifies what production line the container came from and the product it was running.
“Then we would enter it in our tracking system,” explains Loch, the plant manufacturing manager. “So then we understand where our waste losses are coming from.” RFID tracking helps cut production costs. It also helps make the plant more sustainable, says manufacturing director Terry Labrash, a Peterborough native whose parents still live in the south end of the city.
“We strive to be what we call a zero landfill site,” Labrash says. “Less than one per cent of our total waste goes to landfill. Part of that is our strategic partnerships that we have with our food waste byproduct stream.”
Food waste includes oat hulls and “fines,” powdered material that Loch defines as “basically different grades of flour.”
Eight years ago Quaker invested in a new building attached to the 12 large grain silos at the back of the plant. Trucks from Quaker’s waste management partner, SPB Solutions Inc., drive in and are loaded with hulls, fines and “wet” waste from the chewy granola bar and Instant Quaker Oats lines.
SPB Solutions, a national company with a local location in the Pido Rd. industrial park, processes the material for use in animal feed.
During an interview in his office Labrash sketched an overview of the company’s current modernization plan for its oat milling process, which he describes as a “substantial investment.” Milling oats is still the heart of the operation. Oat grains are hulled and the seeds (the hull is a husk; the seed is a groat) are cleaned, sorted, separated, graded and processed with heat and steam.
“We are going to take 68 pieces of equipment and replace them with nine pieces of equipment,” Labrash explains. “And there will be a significant reduction in our energy consumption.”
The plant has cut annual energy use by five per cent (1.7 million kw/hours) and water use by eight per cent (nearly 10,000 cubic metres) over the past five years. Modernizing milling operations will significantly improve those numbers, he says.
It is easier to grasp how 69 machines can be reduced to eight as Loch takes us through the plant. On one milling floor, wood frame “aspirators” continually shake the grain while blowing in air to help sort it. Each is about four feet high and four feet wide.
On another floor a new stainless steel Buhler aspirator is waiting to be assembled. About two-thirds the size of one of the old wooden machines, it will replace six of them.
Some of the old, single-function milling machines date back 80 years. The modern replacements are multi-taskers. Loch mentions that one of the new energy-efficient processors will replace 18 old pieces of equipment.
Another step toward conservation is the application of ideas from a “resource conservation summit” that brought experts from within the company – Quaker is owned by beverage and food giant PepsiCo – and outside consultants to Peterborough last year.
“We just blitzed all of our processes in the entire facility looking for areas of opportunity on conservation,” Labrash says, “and identified some 160 action items that we are now prioritizing for execution.”
As that happens Quaker will further reduce the amount of water and energy it uses, and the waste it produces, while continuing to help feed the nation.
This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, July 2, 2016.
Mikhail Clarkson points to a 10-acre section of mostly flat, gray hardpan. A scattering of grasses and other vegetation that are taking hold grow thicker close to a pond at one end where a half dozen Canada geese swim.
A series of pipes supply an irrigation system and a few large water cannons.
“Five years ago we maintained this area just like a big desert. It was a beach,” says Clarkson, the assistant plant manager at Unimin Canada’s nepheline syenite mine north-east of Havelock in the heart of cottage country. “There was no grass at all.”
Dust was a real problem, especially on hot, dry windy summer days.
Nepheline syenite is an igneous rock that bubbled up to the surface as lava just over one million years ago. It crushes down to a bright, white powder that is used as a filler in almost all glass and ceramic products and in outdoor paint
The tailings left over after the rock is crushed and powdered had always been “slurried.” That is, mixed with water, pumped out over several flat areas that total about 100 acres and left to dry. Hence the dust.
Water was also a problem. Not technically a problem because the company had permits that allowed it to draw water from lakes on the mine property and discharge effluent back in.
However, like most modern corporations, Unimin no longer frames its environmental obligations as simply meeting the base requirements set by government regulators.
“I think that attitude started to change at about the same time that I was hired on, about 10 years ago,” says Clarkson. That was right after he graduated from Queen’s University with a degree in mining engineering.
“It’s something that’s happening in corporate Canada generally. You use the term ‘social licence to operate.’ You can’t be in industry any more without being conscious of the people around you and the environment in which you work.”
The dust problem came to a head in 2012. After a particularly hot, dry spell, high winds stirred a dust storm that affected cottages and homes on nearby Kasshabog Lake. The company was charged by the provincial environment ministry and eventually fined more than $400,000.
But long before the court case was settled, Unimin had begun a $1.5 million investment that would solve the dust issue, substantially reduce the amount of water the mine uses and completely end all effluent discharge.
One part of the solution was to use water that drains off the hillsides of the property as the mixing agent for slurry. Water is still taken from two lakes on the mine property, Barrette Lake and Big Mountain Lake, but substantially less of it.
A system of filtration ponds now filters the water so it can be re-used in the slurry process. That closed loop means the same water is used again and again. And any remaining water is used to irrigate the slurry fields, which will eventually go back to grass and vegetation.
There was a time when Unimin pumped 1.2 million litres of water out of Big Mountain Lake daily. That number is now down to 450,000 litres. And because rainwater that gathers in the huge open pit mine is pumped back into Barrette Lake in a two-stage process, the net effect there is an addition to the lakes system: on an average day 361,000 litres are pumped out and nearly 900,000 litres of rainwater go back in.
The entire mine site covers 3,000 acres but just 10 per cent of it is actively in use, including the 400-foot deep pit mine, slurry fields, roads and the Nephton and Blue Mountain processing plants.
One section of slurry field is now in the last stage of reclamation.
“We’re doing the final elevation and reclaiming it right now. Were putting down the final layer of grass and sod and we’re going to have a nice hill for the kids to play on,” Clarkson says.
Or maybe another option.
“They’re talking about a golf course. It would make a great golf course.”
This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, June 18, 2016.
It’s the end of the lunch rush and Food Forest Cafe is buzzing with conversation, so Adam Deck and Katie Tuma suggest we do our interview out back.
Turns out they were speaking literally. We head outside to an open area behind the Water St. restaurant. Three mismatched chairs, which I later learn likely came from a thrift store, are waiting for us.
Next to the chairs are a few orange, five-gallon pails. Katie says there would usually be a lot more. The pails hold food scraps that farmers and gardeners pick up and use for compost, returning the pails later. During an average week Food Forest gives away 18 pails of the stuff, or 90 gallons.
Deck waves toward a brick wall that separates the courtyard area behind this section of Hunter St. buildings from those along Water St.
On the other side of the wall is a large dumpster bin that other restaurants in the block share and pay to have hauled away.
“Because we’re a plant-based restaurant 100 per cent of our food waste can be composted,” Deck says. “So, at the end of the week we have less than one garbage bag.”
That’s less garbage than most households produce. It goes to the curb for pickup by the city, a big cost saving for them and a load off the landfill site.
Food Forest is vegan and gluten free. It’s no coincidence that the plant-based nature of their menu produce minimal garbage. Deck and Tuma are health and ecology advocates first and restaurateurs second.
They met while studying ecological restoration at Fleming College in Lindsay. Inspired by what they were learning. they looked for a way to make a difference on their own. A vegan restaurant run on strict environmental principles was a natural outlet.
Tuma describes their relationship as “partners in life and in the restaurant.”
Food Forest opened three years ago in a smaller George St. location just north of downtown. A year ago they expanded to the 32-seat Hunter St. site, where they have 10 employees.
The restaurant’s fun, quirky feel fits its clientele and its owners’ personalities, but it was put together with intent.
Pine boards used during the interior renovation are all recovered scrap, most of it sourced from Deck’s father, who owns Deck Transport, a third-generation local trucking firm.
“We also do a lot of thrifting,” Tuma says. “Most of our small pots and cups and teapots are from the thrift store. . . . We aren’t really fans of buying all new.”
When possible they go beyond re-use to “don’t use.”
They don’t give out cutlery as part of their busy take-out business. Take-out containers are made from cane juice pulp, not paper, but they would rather you not use them at all. They charge 25 cents per container and encourage customers to bring their own instead.
“After doing a couple hundred of those orders that saves a lot of waste,” Deck says.
“And gets the conversation going,” Tuma adds. “We have really strict policies – our non-straw in house policy; we don’t give out take-out cutlery – things like that those create conversations, which makes some people uncomfortable but it allows us to explain why we’re doing it and that causes them to think about things in a different way.” They buy their organic vegetables locally whenever possible – Jenny Ross of Earth Nook Farm is their main local provider – and manage the entire business with a mindset of being sustainable, waste free and low carbon.
But the key element, they say, is serving only plant-based food.
“In regards to climate change, wth animal agriculture, especially the intense factory farming that goes on, the greenhouse gas emissions are more than all transportation combined,” Tuma says.
They see no endpoint to their sustainable journey.
“It shouldn’t just stop at a green promise or something like that,” Tuma says. “We kind of assess what we can improve on and how we can get the community involved. It’s fun … fun having that role.”
This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, June 18, 2016.
Sometimes, meeting a green goal is a simple as handing out a coffee mug.
Not just one mug, though.
Three years ago, an in-house team at Siemens that works to ensure the environmental footprint laid down by the Technology Dr. factory is as small as possible realized that their cafeteria went through a lot of paper cups.
“Employees were using a lot of paper coffee cups, and they were bringing them into the facility from Tim Horton’s etc., so we handed out reusable coffee mugs,” recalls Lori MacLeod, the plant’s environmental, health and safety manager.
“We also went a step further and said, ‘If you’re going to buy coffee in the cafeteria and use your reusable mug you get five cents off the coffee.”
Each of the 325 employees got a thermal mug. The result: in addition to whatever dent they made in paper cup consumption at local coffee shops, the cafeteria now buys 60 per cent fewer cups.
Similar employee participation initiatives help the local Siemens plant meet energy and waste reduction targets it gets from its national head office. But the impetus for green performance is ultimately driven by the international parent company.
Siemens AG, based in Germany, has 350,000 employees in 187 countries. One of its goals is to be the first world’s first major industrial company to reduce it’s output of carbon – the primary source of climate-change inducing greenhouse gas – to net zero.
The target date for a zero carbon footprint is 2030.
Scott Hoy is the facility and maintenance manager at the Technology Dr. plant. Since coming to Siemens from GE-Hitachi eight months ago he’s been responsible for a project to replace the large air handlers that heat and cool the 180,000 sq. ft. building, along with some of the rooftop HVAC units, with more energy efficient equipment.
“We can recover heat within the building, too,” Hoy says. “A lot of our processes give off heat, which would just be sent outside. We’re looking at a recirculation method and heat recovery to reduce that so we won’t have to use the gas fired heaters as much.”
Smaller efficiency measure are often suggested by employees through the company’s 3i program – ideas, impulses and initiatives.
“We had one employee up in the offices and one employee downstairs put in a 3i idea and I’ve approved it and it’s going through. It’s putting in motion sensors in the copy room and the coat room upstairs,” Hoy explains.
The sensors will turn lights on and off depending on whether someone is using the space.
“We could do that in the kitchen, too,” Macleod says, adding one more entry to the 3i file.
Macleod notes that the ubiquitous wooden pallets that arrive when equipment and supplies are delivered had been a problem.
“We had a real struggle finding someone who would use and recycle them. In the last two quarters we’ve actually diverted six tonnes of wood scraps into recycling.”
The skids are now recycled in Lindsay, an arrangement set up by Greenspace Waste Solutions, a Brampton based company that for the past year has mangaged the waste from the plant.
Following an extensive renovation of the plant’s offices, Greenspace is finding a home for less conventional “waste” that would otherwise end up in a landfill, Hoy says.
“We’re working with Greenspace and another company called CSR Ecosolutions. They will come in and take all the old office furniture, refurb it, fix it up, and then they donate it to charities that need it.”
Projects like that have helped push the plant’s waste diversion rate up to 73%, Macleod says. Ten years ago that figure was 61 per cent.
In January the plant received this year’s Environmental Excellence Business Award from Otonabee Conservation, recognizing Siemens employees for having planted 1,200 trees and shrubs around the city and county over the past five years.
Workers get paid time off to take part in those Earth Day tree planting projects, another example of Siemens’ commitment to a green agenda.
This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Monday, May 23rd, 2016.