Busted! Illegal Backcountry Trash Dumpers caught on Video

Have you ever dumped anything out in the bush? Or in a ditch along the side of the road? Or maybe in an empty lot?

No??

Maybe it was just some grass clippings or leaves or some sod?

Or maybe it was more than that...

Illegal dumping (or fly tipping in the UK) is on the rise in many countries. It can include anything from grass clippings to cars to appliances to pallets to construction waste to medical waste. It is a huge environmental problem. Apart from leaching toxins into the soil (asbestos, chemicals, bio-hazards) illegal dumping can also spread noxious and invasive weeds.

Yard waste dumped in an empty lot might not just be "grass" clippings but might include invasive species that threaten the native ecosystem. Over here... that includes things like

• English Ivy
• Himalayan Blackberry
• English Hawthorn
• Japanese Knotweed - Polygonum cuspidatum
• Policeman's Helmet or Himalayan Balsam - Impatiens glandulifera
• Scotch Broom
• Butterfly Bush
• English Holly
  
• Morning Glory
  
• Spurge Laurel - Daphne laureola
  
• Gorse
  

Such plants should never be included within your compost bin either but should be double bagged and sent to the landfill where they can be buried forever...

Illegal dumping also costs taxpayers (that's you and me) millions of dollars every year. It's not a cheap thing to bring in a crane and trucks to haul away derelict cars, tires, machinery, appliances and other crap.

Caught Red-Handed

Some municipalities and regional districts, rather than just cleaning up after someone's made a mess, are getting proactive and installing motion-activated trail cameras at some of the most popular illegal dumping sites. Busted!!

 

And it's not just hidden cameras that can track down illegal dumpers. One farm owner in New Brunswick found 30 to 40 garbage bags worth of garbage strewn in the ditch in front of his family farm. While cleaning it up, he found a Nike box with a shipping label receipt inside that gave him the name and address of the perpetrator. The farmer drove to the address, confronted the perpetrator, who eventually admitted his guilt and told the perpetrator to unload the garbage onto his front lawn.

Some irate land owners haven't been so polite... they have just driven to the address found within the pile of garbage and dumped it on someone's front lawn (presumably that of the perpetrator). That can of course backfire as the land owner is simply doing the same as the perpetrator... illegal dumping. 

Some upset property owners, when they find identifiable information in a pile of garbage, call out the perpetrator online via social media. But that can lead to other problems... sometimes legal... so is not ideal. But what can irate land owners to do? Apparently, not much. Unless you have photos and videos... a simple visual description and license plate number won't stand up in court.

Of course there are the rare times where a person will be caught live on a dashcam, in the very act of dumping stuff out in the bush. I always wonder... what happened after the camera shut off? Did the perpetrator obediently take his stuff to a legal dump? Or did he just find another, less patrolled spot?

Other Forms of Illegal Dumping

As noted above, illegal dumping also includes dumping yard waste in natural areas (yes, even Christmas trees). But it also includes such seemingly innocuous things such as dumping household waste in a public garbage can or dumpster (even your dumpster at work). My Dad would do this for some odd reason. He would take a bag of his garbage along to Walmart and dump in the garbage can our front. I tend to think it was mostly empty cookie packages that he was trying to hide from us!

And... putting an item out at the curb and placing a "Free" sign on it can be problematic as well. Inevitably, the old couch (or whatever) is not taken and then it rains and the item is essentially abandoned at the curb... yep, that's illegal dumping.

Why Do People Dump?

That's always the burning question. Why do people dump things in the ditch or in the bush?

Apparently "convenience" is a big driver, although that doesn't always make sense. Some of the remote bush dump sites are a longer drive than the regional landfill. Sometimes people don't want to have to deal with the hassle of sorting their waste. Easier to just toss it all in the truck and dump it somewhere.

Cost is often cited as an issue since some waste actually costs money to dispose of at the landfill (harmful construction waste - e.g. drywall with asbestos). Even yard waste can cost money - usually $/pound. On the other hand, many items can be dropped off for free at our local recycling depot - anything made out of metal... any appliances... any propane tanks or canisters... paint cans (with legible labels). And the list goes on. 

Ignorance seems to be a driving motivator for illegal dumping. People don't know the environmental dangers of what they are dumping... or they just don't care. And they aren't aware of the numerous legal means for getting rid of unwanted items.

Beware of the Two Guys and a Truck Scheme

And finally... a word of warning. After my Dad passed away, we needed to get rid of his old (1960s?) mattress and box spring. We didn't have a pick-up truck capable of hauling it off to the dump. So we looked on Kijiji and found two guys with a truck who would come and haul it away for us. Only $40! Seemed like a good deal. They came and loaded up. We paid them cash and they left.

But... did they really take it to the dump? Did they really pay the dump fee. The average cost to dispose of a box spring and mattress in our regional district is... $15 each. That's $30 in dump fees. Yeah. I'm going to guess that Dad's old mattress is mouldering away in some illegal dump site in the bush.

Live and learn. Beware of any "cheap" offers by a couple of guys with a truck who offer to haul garbage away for you. There is no guarantee that your garbage is going to end up in the dump.

Happily... things have progressed in the last few years to the point where many landfills are now diverting mattresses to be recycled rather than buried in a landfill!

On a final note... even legitimate companies can run into trouble with illegal dumping, often because their employees are too lazy or uninformed to adhere to company policy. In Chicago, one truck from the Two Men and a Truck Moving Company were actually caught dumping furniture in an alley. The two guys were fired and the company had to come and haul the furniture away.

Other Resources

CBC - Illegal garbage dumpers in the Okanagan

CBC - Hidden cameras

Langley Township - Other Forms of  Illegal Dumping

CBC - Dumping off a 30 metre Cliff in Parksville Continue

Recycling Council of BC - Report on Illegal Dumping (opens as a pdf)

Why do Home Renovation Shows always Smash Stone Counter Tops?

I have a pet peeve with home renovation shows. It doesn't matter what show it is but... on Demo Day... they all tend to go in and just smash up perfectly good kitchen cabinets and stone counters. Why??? It seems like such a waste. A waste of money, a waste of materials, a waste of... well... waste. All that stuff has to go somewhere, into some landfill somewhere. I know it looks good on TV but... seriously?

Fixer Upper - Chip & Joanna Gains

There are some shows where they will actually take out the cabinets carefully and say that they are sending them off to be repurposed. But those shows are in the definite minority. Maybe it costs too much to lift out stone counter tops? Easier and cheaper to just smash everything with a sledge hammer?

We did a kitchen reno last year and there was no smashing involved. A couple of friends came over and helped us take the 40 year old cabinets off the walls. It wasn't a lot of fun because some of the cabinet screws had been painted several times but... we got them all down with no smashing. And our friends then loaded up all the cabinets and used them in their garage. These weren't even wood cabinets, just cheap builder-grade laminate/particle board cabinets. But they got a second life.

Our old laminate counter top, on the other hand, did go to the dump. If it had been a long 6 foot stretch, we would have taken it to the ReStore where someone could have used it for something. But... our longest stretch was 8 feet with a big hole in the middle for the double sink sooo... off to the dump it went.

Which just goes to show that it can be done. I've seen people list old kitchens on Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace and sell them. Or just give them away for free. Look in a few open garages in your neighbourhood and you might see a whole plethora of storage cabinets thanks to a kitchen reno.

As for stone counter tops... there are a gazillion YouTube videos about how to take them out in one piece. But then what? Donate it. Sell it. Use it in the garden. Get it cut into tiles. Use it for a fireplace. Use it for mosaic flooring. The possibilities are endless. And the dump should be the last place for stone counters...

Which makes me wonder... all of those home reno shows just tend to toss all the waste into a big dumpster. Does all of that just go into the landfill? Or does someone, somewhere, sort through all of that stuff and pick out the wood and the tile and the insulation and the drywall? At first I thought, Noooo, that can't be but... apparently with environmental laws, there are some things that can't be dumped in the landfill all willy nilly... things like wood and drywall and metal.

I found the local DBL site and... will you look at that... There's a pic of workers sorting through a dumpster load of construction waste. Looks like a pile of drywall in the background. Go figure... so they DO recycle all that stuff. At least... here they do.

DBL workers sorting through construction waste
(from DBL site)

But... the Gold Star for limiting the amount of waste goes to another company called... Unbuilders. Because, it's not just kitchen renos that create waste. There are also whole houses that get demolished. And those often go something like this...

House Demo via Wikipedia

Yup, just get a digger machine and start tearing away at it... then load it all into a dumpster and send it off for sorting and disposal. Again... seems like such a waste.

But... Ta-daaaaahhh!!! Unbuilders to the rescue! They are a Vancouver company that unbuilds houses... Check out this 1 minute YouTube video of them unbuilding a house.

Smart, eh? Because some of those houses have old-growth timber in them (used up until the 1970s) and that stuff is pure gold in today's market. While traditional demo companies take the wood to be chipped and burned as fuel... Unbuilders sees a better use, a second life, for ancient lumber.

Yes, unbuilding takes longer and costs more but... there are a few other things to consider. Homeowners who go the way of unbuilding qualify for a tax credit. So even though Unbuilders cost $45,000 for a traditional home ($10,000 more than a regular demolition), the tax credits allow the homeowner to come out ahead with big savings. 

Stack of salvage lumber from Unbuilders site

The Unbuilders salvage anything and everything - metal pipes, wiring, wooden floors, sinks, appliances. Their current record for a single home is 96.8 per cent of materials salvaged or recycled and diverted from the landfill. The only things that can't be recycled or salvaged are vinyl flooring and asphalt shingles.

It's nice to know that there are companies out there that don't just crash and smash and toss. And... the Unbuilders have come to Vancouver Island too!! Excellent news...

P.S. Second Pet Peeve

The habit of home renovation shows to call everything "granite". Not all stone is "granite"! There's marble, soapstone, labradorite, granite, basalt, gneiss, granodiorite, gabbro, diorite and... a whole array of stone that is used to make counters. None of which are "granite" although some could be called "granitic".

Granite, geologically speaking, is a very specific rock type with a very specific ratio of minerals like quartz, two types of feldspar, mica and maybe some amphiboles. This is granite... see the pink feldspar... typical of granite.

These... are NOT granite... although they are called "granite" by home design/decor/renovation folks. Sigh. Sloppy language...

In the News - Disposable Clothes

As I write this on 25 March, most clothing stores are closed due to Covid19. As are most thrift stores. I think our Value Village might still be open... nope, just checked and it is closed. I guess clothing and fashion aren't really essential to daily living!

This means we are all going to have live with whatever we have in our closets and dressers which is likely quite a bit. After all, most of us wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time, leaving a whole 80% of our closet with very little to do. Without the option for buying the latest spring fashions... our closets might get some fresh air and new life as we start actually wearing what we already own.

I'm not a fashionista by any means. I haven't bought new clothes (except underwear and socks) for years. All of my clothing comes from thrift stores, usually Value Village because they have the best selection. I'm also a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal... I don't need anything fancy. So, I've always been a bit perplexed by the fashion industry and the latest spring/fall fashions. The only time it impinges on me is when pants flare out to bell bottoms or got ultra skinny. Although, nowadays, I can usually find some pair of thrift jeans that work and are just standard, plain old jeans.

I came across this news article the other month... about how Metro Vancouver throws away 20,000 tonnes of clothes each year. That's a lot of clothing. And that is just the clothing that actually goes to the landfill... not to thrift stores where it might get a second or third life. Although a lot of clothing that doesn't sell at thrift stores ends up being shipped to third world countries where it might get sold at a market or... end up cluttering up their landfills.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that Fast Fashion is not designed to be Sturdy Fashion. Spring/Fall fashions are meant to be worn for one season and then cast aside for the next fashion season. Which means manufacturers do not make them to last.

Make Do and Mend

On top of that, clothing manufacturing can be a highly toxic industry and use enormous amounts of water. So the more fast fashion that is produced... and then discarded... the higher the demand... and the more pollution we generate. Yes, "we". With our demands for new clothing, we fuel the supply chain that creates the toxins and drains the water supply. If you're interested in learning more about the unsustainability of the fashion industry... have a look at this BBC article. It covers the whole gamut quite nicely.

The other problem lies in the fact that we, as a society, have generally lost the impetus to Make Do and Mend. It's been decades since I mended a sock... or patched a hole in a pair of jeans.

When I was growing up, my Mom, who had trained as a seamstress, was forever darning socks and patching our clothing. Heck, she even made our clothing! We had boxes of Simplicity, Butterick and McCall's patterns and got to go to school dressed in red, purple or lime green polyester pant suits... oooh.

Butterick pattern

She sewed, she crocheted, she hand-knitted and she even had a Knittax knitting machine. Mom grew up during the Depression and the War in Europe and... she learned how to mend and make do. It might be something that we could learn from today.

For myself, if my t-shirts get stained or develop a hole, they get demoted to play clothes and then to garden t-shirts. Right now... I have a lot of garden t-shirts available!

As for jeans... my current garden jeans have a massive hole in the knee and I am already eyeing my closet to see which pair of jeans will volunteer to become the new garden jeans. For right now though, I will eek out as much wear from the current torn garden jeans as I can...

What else can we do?

• Mend and Make Do - if you've got a sewing machine... you're in the money!
• Get more life out of our clothes - wear them carefully - use aprons when cooking or wear a garden t-shirt while cooking (I can't tell you how many of my t-shirts have cooking oils splatters...)
• Clothing Swap - this might not work so well in the Year of the Virus but... at other times... swap clothes with friend who are the same size
• Wear what we Have - that out-of-fashion pair of pants might be perfectly fine when all else fails...

I'm going to hazard a guess that we are all going to get a crash course in minimalism and learn what the really important things are. Fast Fashion isn't going to be one of those things. Besides... the fashion industries are too busy rejigging production lines to make Personal Protection Equipment (masks, gowns, scrubs)...

In the News - Recycling Mattresses

When my Dad passed away last year, my sister and I had to decide what to do with all of his stuff, including his furniture. He had a nice solid wood bed frame which we kept, but what to do with the mattress and box spring? These were old... probably from the 1970s. They still had handles for Pete's sake.

I already knew that no thrift store in our city would take used mattresses, so that was out. They were too old and stained to try and sell on Kijiji. We didn't have a vehicle which could schlepp the mattresses to the dump. So we got a couple of "We get rid of your Trash" guys from Kijiji and they came, tied the mattress and box spring to the top of their vehicle and drove off with it. We paid them $40 to dispose of it at the landfill. Theoretically. I've since learned that these fly-by-night guys could just have driven down some side road and dumped the mattresses in the bush. It was a convenience for us to go with a couple of cheap guys... but I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. I've seen my share of mattresses by the side of the road sooo... clearly that is not a solution.


But is it really that big a deal? I mean... when you buy a mattress... you're buying it for 20-25 years, right? Nope... apparently the average mattress life-span is 8-10 years. The US throws away 18,000,000 mattresses/year. Canadians throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. And the numbers are only increasing. People today are buying new memory foam mattresses with gusto via Casper and other online retailers, mattresses that might not last more than a few years.

My partner and I bought a top-of-the-line memory foam mattress about 15 years ago. It was heaven for the first few months but then... the memory foam started to form a bad memory and it didn't bounce back like it had before. There were hollows that formed in the foam and the comfort disappeared. Worst purchase ever. We contacted the retailer but they said it was normal wear. Ugh. No 100 day guarantee there. We eventually got rid of it by gifting it to a friend who wanted a memory foam mattress.

Casper - mail order mattresses

Had we bought an online memory foam mattress though... we could have tried it for 100 days, decided that it wasn't for us, and then send it back to the retailer. While we could then try another online retailer with a 100 day guarantee. Rinse and repeat. Apparently this is a thing. With over 100 online mattress retailers, you could conceivably cycle through a new mattress every 100 days and never actually buy one. And your used & returned mattress? Are they resold? Hmm... likely not. Welcome to the World of Disposable Mattresses... each with a 100 day life span.

Which got me thinking... what happens to old mattresses that can't be re-gifted or sold? Where do they go, besides the side of the road? Do they get buried in the landfill? Apparently they do, for a fee of course. Gone are the days when you could just dump your old mattress at the landfill for free. Today, it costs $15/mattress/box spring to dump at our landfill. Which... errr... really makes me think our junk boys took our money ($40) and just dumped the mattresses in the bush instead of shelling out $30 at the landfill.

Some municipalities (e.g. Vancouver) actually banned mattress from landfills in 2011 (that's progressive!). I can now see why dumping by the side of the road might be preferable for some... just let the city/regional district/taxpayer fork over the cash to pick it up and dispose of it. It's not a small problem... so what are the other options? Can mattresses be recycled?

Mattress recycling in Calgary

Yes and no... mattresses are challenging to recycle AND their component parts do not generate a lot of income. Mattresses are basically fabric, padding, metal springs and wood. While the metal has some value... the padding (foam, etc) can be harder to handle. It can cost more to recycle a mattress than the sale of its component parts. That's why even mattress recyclers will charge money to handle our worn-out sleeping pads.

It's no wonder then that mattress recycling facilities aren't all that common. The citizens of the United States throw away 18,200,000 mattresses a year... but there are only 56 recycling facilities that can handle mattresses in the US. As for Canada, we apparently throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. How many recycling facilities are there? Not sure... let me look into that...

Well... that was fascinating! I learned quite a bit while researching this blog post. The good news is 95% of a mattress's components can be given a second life. Check out the video link below to see what happens to mattresses...

Common mattress components - steel, foam, cotton, wood

• polyurethane padding - shredded, pressed and used for carpet underlay
• cotton batting - cleaned and used for furniture stuffing
• felt padding - available for free from recycler - can be used as insulation or packing material
• wooden frame - available for free from recycler or used as biofuel
• metal springs - go to metal recycling

That's the good news... the bad news is that there aren't that many mattress recycling facilities out there. And... many municipalities either ban mattresses from landfill or charge fees for their disposal. Sooo... the bad news is that there are some less than ideal ways to deal with excess mattresses.

Sri Lanka - UK container with mattresses (the green plastic
is used by manufacturers and stores when they "recycle"
mattresses)

Mattresses are sometimes shipped off to the Third World where they become someone else's problem. In 2019, a batch of shipping containers from the UK were sent to Sri Lanka and found to be mislabeled as "metal recycling". The containers didn't have metal recyclables... they were stuffed to the gills with mattresses, plastics and hospital waste (think amputation parts).

There is also the "refurbished" mattress industry, which is legal in some areas... and illegal in others.

Refurbishers take whatever old mattresses they can find, recover them and then sell them for cheap in furniture stores, thrift stores and, sometimes, from the back of a van.

Tags from a new and a sanitized, refurbished mattress.

The mattresses are "supposed" to have been sanitized but this may not always be the case. Obviously, this can be very unhygienic and it's debatable if it is worth the cheaper price. Refurbished mattresses can be identified because they don't have any tags... so... buyer beware...

I've done a bit of digging and... we do have a few legitimate mattress recyclers in Western Canada:

• Hope, BC (go BC!!) - Mattress Recycling - they charge $20/box spring/mattress
• Vancouver BC - Canadian Mattress Recycling - $20/mattress/box spring (they also recycle furniture). These guys have a pretty cool story - watch this three minute video to learn what happens to all the mattress bits...
• Calgary, AB - Re-Matt - $20/mattress/box spring - Albert's first mattress recycling company - similar to the other two companies

And... our regional district is moving in the same direction. They started a pilot project last November and in two months, 710 mattresses were diverted from the landfill. Hoping that continues.


But all of this raises the question... it still costs money to bring an old mattress/box spring to a recycling facility. It makes me wonder why the government doesn't tack on an eco-recycling fee to the purchase price of a new mattress. You know, like with vehicle tires. We pay up the end-of-life recycle/disposal fee up front, so it doesn't become an issue to dispose of the tires sensibly. I remember the day when such was not the case and tires would end up out in the bush where they would slowly leach toxins into the soil and ground water. Those days are gone (or are they?)... maybe it's time to add mattresses to that list...

Inspiration
This blog post started with a CTV news article which made me curious...
CTV News - Calgary company recycles thousands of mattresses
Guardian - The Mattress Landfill Crisis