My journey to the stinkiest place in Toronto began with a class discussion about the reek of ancient Rome—a city said to have smelled like rotten fish.
This lesson reminded me of the occasional putrid wafts from my green bin waste that send my olfactory into a fit. After thousands of pounds of this waste are collected from our neighborhoods every week, I wondered where it goes and who deals with it. So I ventured into the realms of stench to find out how the particularly odorous scent of green bin waste is kept in check.
|
Douglas Beattie, plant manager of the Dufferin Organics Processing Facility, works amid the stink of organic debris every day. His eyebrows, which punctuate his face like sideways commas, raise in delight as he says,
"Once you've been in the plant for five minutes or so, you largely get used to it."
Before we tour the plant, I remove my jacket and sweater—Beattie warns me that the smell will penetrate my clothes.
I suppress my vomit reflex at the damp bouquet of rotting apples, diapers and dog poop. Beattie shows me the source of the solid stench: a 120-tonne mountain of sopping plastic bags full of organics.
We turn to a massive steel machine--the pulper.
"It's basically a very large kitchen blender," says Beattie. This contraption blends waste with water to make runny muck. Plastic bags are opened, and spiky steel claws scoop away floating debris.
Cutlery, computers, coins—sink to the floor of the tank, whence they will be sent to landfills. "One thing no one is ever able to explain is that we get a large number of batteries. Hundreds a day," says Beattie.
|
|
We follow the mush to a massive black funnel.
Pulp enters, spins, and flings bits of unwanted material (bones, metals) outwards. The remaining material then travels to the screw press, a silvery, rotating twist that squeezes out liquid, leaving behind brown, earthy solids.
They send this soil-like substance up north to be turned into compost.
Beattie leads me outside to windy salvation. We walk around the building to fields surrounded by cinder blocks. Fans thrust plant air through pipes into a wood chip and grass garden, where bacteria eat odour-causing chemicals. This is where the stench is managed, though the neighbours may beg to differ.
They don’t kick up nearly as big a stink as those near the Halton Recycling Ltd. In Newmarket, another green bin waste purgatory. Tom Darlow, facilities engineering manager for the Halton palnt, takes me on another smelly whirlwind of organics processing. Here, the stink is cut with the less putrid whiff of decayed coffee.
When I say the smell is more bearable than at Dufferin, Darlow's smooth face widens into a smile. I later learn on this same day, Newmarket passed a resolution to stop odour-producing activities at his facility. Wanda Bennett, manager of corporate communications for Newmarket, says the town has received more than 500 complaints about Halton's distinct perfume.
"Most of the complaints are around nausea and vomiting," Bennett says, adding sore throats and stinging eyes to the list. "We had little girls in the stands [at the press conference about the resolution] holding signs that said, 'Stop the smell so we can be well.'"
My exploration of green bin stink stayed with me for several days— mostly in the pungent stench my leather purse absorbed. This parting gift was a reminder to fully appreciate successful stink management and the intricate processes that keep waste under control.
