Canadian Resource Recovery Council forms

The Canadian Resource Recovery Council (CRRC) has formed in Canada with a mission to be a new voice for “the resource recovery industry in Canada.”

CRRC President John Foden says the Toronto-based association will “pick up the torch to support an industry that has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade.”

The CRRC is “rising from the ashes of the defunct but highly successful Canadian Energy-From-Waste Coalition,” the new group states in a news release.

“Governments across Canada recognize now that waste is a resource,” says Foden. “The CRRC will work collaboratively with decision makers to create progressive policies and regulations that support the increased utilization and development of resource recovery protocols that are consistent with the principles of extended producer responsibility, the integrated waste hierarchy and zero waste.”

The CRRC says it promotes the most sustainable means of treating residual, predisposal waste while “recognizing that advanced resource recovery solutions, including energy from waste, are fundamentally linked to effective and proactive recycling and other diversion efforts.”

The CRRC also supports the designation of energy generated via resource recovery processes as renewable baseload power.

“We’ll work to encourage commercially viable energy from traditional waste sources, but we’ll remain neutral about technology,” says Foden. “Combustion, conversion, composting—it’s all diversion and will surely move us toward where we need to be.”

The CRRC says it represents industry, associations and “other stakeholders committed to sustainable environmental policies and working collaboratively towards a policy regime that recognizes waste as a resource.”

Founding members include the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, the Power Workers Union, the Ontario Environment Industry Association, Aquilini Renewable Energy, Entech-REM, Hitachi Zosen, Golder Associates and Ramboll.