Bridging the gap

A wise man once noted that ideas are a dime a dozen. “I have a couple hundred ideas every day but only one or two of them are any good.”

But what if you filled a room for a day with industry experts and academics? You’d probably come away with a few dozen good ideas. Then again, even if it only produced a couple of worthy notions, you can be pretty sure they’re really quite good.

That’s what happened at the University of Waterloo in Ontario this summer. With municipalities and industries across Canada searching for ways to manage waste, generate affordable energy, and create new revenue streams, it seemed that the time was just right to bring together a brain trust.

A recently commissioned industry study concluded that Canadian universities and colleges host considerable expert research capability in the field of waste management.

Recognizing that this gap was holding back the industry from operating at the leading edge, the University of Waterloo stepped into the breach, opening a new channel for the study of waste-related issues by hosting the Solid Waste Management Partnerships Workshop (SWMPW).

“Advancements through rigorous evidence-based science are critical if we are to realize the full potential of waste as a resource in a sustainable energy future,” says University of Waterloo Professor Bill Anderson.

Hosted in the William G. Davis Research Centre, the event represented another important collaboration between the University of Waterloo; Columbia University of New York; the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE); the Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA); the Canadian Resource Recovery Council (CRRC); and the Ontario Environmental Industries Association (ONEIA).

The proceedings were financially supported by a generous grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

With participants from all regions across Canada and almost evenly divided between academia, industry and government, the workshop format encouraged open and frank dialogue. What made this event unique is the scientific perspective.

With a focus on research needs and policy—not commerce—this was the ideal forum for gaining clear insight into the needs of the waste industry and the role of academia in finding solutions and developing new models. Critical themes emerged almost immediately, focusing on three areas, including resource recovery, energy recovery and public policy alternatives.

Increasing the utilization of energy recovery/energy-from-waste received almost universal support.

Improving the means and quality of data collection was identified as a significant challenge to industry decision-making. Managers, analysts and operators all agreed that there’s not nearly enough data available, and that what’s collected is not nearly good enough and hardly ever available soon enough. Waste companies and municipalities are sitting on a valuable treasure trove of data, but because it is gathered for different purposes and utilizing different tools, there is little coordination across the industry, and as a result insight is lost.

The delegates recognized that one of the great opportunities ignored by the waste industry is the lack of a shared, long-term vision due to an absence of indepth peer-reviewed research. Although many other industries in Canada benefit from a strong working relationship with academia, academic collaboration with the waste industry to date has been entirely uncoordinated, utilized by industry on an as-needed basis rather than in a strategic way. It’s time to move away from such an isolated operational framework and embrace a new business paradigm that leverages Canada’s tremendous untapped domestic expertise and technological capability to build a robust and proactive plan for the future.

The SWMPW partners will be working toward a follow-up program to build on these developments, including another workshop and an investigation of ways to encourage closer collaboration between academia, government and industry.

John Foden is president of the Canadian Resource Recovery Council (CRRC) and president and CEO, PresterJohn Public Affairs, Toronto, and can be reached at jpfoden@presterjohn.ca.