Peerless Road has been a recycling site from
British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD) since the 1970s. Since
its early days as an incinerator, the Recycling & Waste Management Division
of Cowichan Valley has always made the recycling site available to residents in
Ladysmith, Saltair, Chemainus, North Oyster, and Cedar. Over time, the site’s
layout became inefficient for recycling purposes and difficult to access,
especially in wet conditions. By the end of 2011, the only leftover from the
site’s original purpose was a 45,000m3 pile of incinerator ash (the
same volume as 20 hot air balloons). The site had become home to blackberry
bushes, weeds, and brambles, giving the pile a vaguely greener but unkempt look.
However, that all changed in March 2012, when
the federal government announced it would provide funding to help transform the
site. The project might have been stopped almost immediately, when estimates to
remove the ash pile got as high as $8 million.
But a stroke of genius at this early stage set the trend for how the
development of this site would be handled right up to its opening ceremony
almost exactly two years later.
A closer look at the ash revealed that it
included metal residues forged together in the incinerator heat. Astonishingly, 125 tons of metal was extracted
from the ash and recycled. The ash was compacted and converted into an
engineered ‘cell’ that became the foundation for the new site. Such ingenuity
at the start of the process helped free up more funds, enabling the old
incinerator building to be restored rather than torn down. This has now become the central recycling
building at the heart of the site. But even more items were re-used as the
project continued.
Anything new on the site was constructed in as
green a fashion as possible. Tree stumps
were collected and re-used to serve as a habitat for amphibians and small
mammals that had used the site as their home long before it became a recycling
center. The roofs of any new buildings were designed to manage storm water
run-off. New windows were double-glazed
for insulation, new plumbing included high-efficiency fixtures and toilets, and
even the paint was ‘low-VOC’ (volatile organic compound). The ash that had been an accumulating eyesore
for decades became the base for 21 brand-new drop-off bays for large or heavy
appliances.
When Peerless Road re-opened in March 2014, it
had become a recycling ‘best practice’ case study. Serving around 17,000 people, of whom about
3,000 visit the site every month, Peerless Road is now able to accept more than
650 different items for recycling! These
range from regular household recyclables and organic food waste to a myriad of
household appliances, power equipment, oil, antifreeze, scrap metal, lighting,
textiles, batteries, tires, thermostats, and even rubble from construction
sites!
Peerless Road’s redesign allows residents to
have a one-stop-shop for all their recyclable items, making it convenient for
them to participate in the municipality’s recycling efforts. As a Call2Recycle
program participant, Peerless Road provides residents with a convenient place
to recycle batteries.
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