From Trash to Triumph: Mayor Narrates Saga of Coubourg’s Metamorphosis

The trajectory for global waste generation shows that it will grow from 2.24 billion tonnes in 2020 to nearly 3.88 billion tonnes by 2050 (as per the projection of the More Growth, Less Garbage report of the World Bank). Canada is no exception. North America produces three million tonnes of plastic waste each year and only nine per cent gets recycled. Remaining plastic waste either goes to waste to energy plants or landfills.

In this edition of one-on-one, Lucas Cleveland, Mayor of Cobourg opens up to our Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update about how the town has been dealing with the problem of waste management with its waste diversion strategy. Cleveland also discusses Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP), Great Lakes, and the St Lawrence Cities Initiative and their climate change mitigation plan

Firstly, I would like to ask you how local governments function in Canada?

So in Canada, we have two constitutionally approved levels of government. We have the federal level, and then we have the provincial level. There’s a clear division of powers between the province and the federation. Within Ontario, local municipal governments are a creation of provincial statute, meaning they don’t have constitutional status. Instead, local governments are created through legislation of the province

Cobourg is part of a two-tier municipal governance model. Cobourg is a beachfront community about one hour east of Toronto. It’s about 22 square km, and there are about 20,000 residents. As the mayor of Cobourg, once elected, I get pushed up to the first tier, which includes Northumberland County. Northumberland County is a 90,000-person community that encompasses 2,000 sq km.

There are seven mayors of the various regions and cities within Northumberland County Council. Northumberland Council sits within the province of Ontario. It is over a million square kilometres, and in that area, we have 14 million people making up 35 per cent of Canada.

What are the major responsibilities of local governments in Canada?

It depends on whether you’re a single tier municipality or a lower tier one. For example, in Cobourg, we handle local issues such as roads, building permits, and development planning, and we’re also working on sustainability. Similarly, at the first tier in Northumberland County, there our assigned duties include roads, paramedics, ambulance services, garbage, recycling services etc. So again, each municipality can differ in terms of its role in governance. In single tier model like Toronto, anything not covered by the Federal or Provincial Government falls on the shoulder of the municipal government.

Earlier, you were talking about solid waste management initiatives and circular economy models. Can you elaborate on that?

I think it’s important that we first talk about what we’re doing at the local level in Cobourg. What I mean by that is we have to stress the importance of our Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP), which was launched in 2016. The plan comprises of our sustainability goals which are worked into a sort of model of governance. It’s a long forecasting document that ensures that our sustainability commitments are part and parcel of our governance model. It’s also facilitating planning and wastewater management at the local level. We’ve just implemented the wastewater management system that was rolled out in 2023.

Now if we go up to the upper level of governance, which is Northumberland County, they’re primarily responsible for recycling and waste diversion. In 2014, we were down to our last landfill site in Northumberland County, and the process to get a new landfill is expensive. So the council at the time did is that they came up with a waste diversion strategy.

In Northumberland County, we’ve had a blue box system (recycling system) since the 90s. But we were sort of stuck at a 30 per cent waste diversion mark. When we came up with the long-term waste diversion plan, we had an ambitious goal of diverting 75 per cent of our waste away from the landfill to other streams of renewable and compostable.

What do you mean by waste diversion? Are you talking about recycling?

Yes, I’m talking about specific types of recycling. For instance, Northumberland County has specific recycling programs for food waste, leaf waste, bulky plastic waste, clothing and styrofoam. We’ve split our residential recycling program into two streams. We have our paper and plastic and metals programme coming down the pipeline. In the next two to three years, we’re going to introduce further diversion programs separating lumber, asphalt, building materials and furniture. So each one of these categories I’ve just listed has various means of recycling, separate from waste diversion.

Our next ambitious project was put forward in 2016, by the provincial level of government. They are making the producers of waste and its by-products responsible for the recycling of their products. It’s really important because it is an overarching strategy that we started in 2016 and will be fully implemented by 2026.

And how do you fix the responsibility of producers?

What we do is we charge them (producers) for the end of the life cycle as per the production line. For example, for someone who has a small grocery store, what’s going to happen is the price of his containers is simply going to have an excess tax which will be used for paying for recycling or end-of-life. We want to incentivise corporations, producers, and people who generate waste, to use biodegradable products and products that are more easily upcycled, recycled and reused.

Is there a different tax regime for people using sustainable materials for packaging?

That is what we’re talking about. We are creating incentives for companies to clean up their act.

We have divided waste management into two categories residential and commercial. Residential waste is managed by the municipality at its own cost and commercial waste is handled by private companies. So what we’re doing is we’re kind of integrating the two. We’re making sure that it’s neither on the municipalities nor the private sector to clean up waste but on the producers of the waste.

Since we’re talking about solid waste management, is legacy waste also a problem?

So this is part and parcel of why we set such an ambitious target in Northumberland County. In 2014, when we did a projection of the life of our landfill, it was predicted to be filled last year. Now, when we’ve gone up 50 to 52 per cent of diversion, that landfill site will not be filled until 2032- 2033 or even beyond.

Does the Municipal Corporation also earn some revenue out of waste?

What will happen is the municipalities will still be doing the recycling programmes and managing them, but they will not be getting funding from the government. Instead, they will get funding from the waste producers.

I’d like to also talk about the financial incentives of waste diversion. We’ve already discovered, through our programs, that for every 1,000 tonne of diverted waste, seven jobs are created. We’ve also learned that waste diversion programs create ten times more jobs than waste pickup. So there is an economic advantage to creating these waste diversions. Not only do we increase the life of the landfill, do right for our environment and make sure that we’re putting the onus back on the producers to produce better quality materials, but we’re further strengthening our economy. It seems to be building a circular economy. It’s not a new idea, but it has regained momentum because of the economic aspect of it.

As a mayor, if you want to pinpoint one ground breaking initiative of Cobourg, what would that be? Also, what is your vision for the city?

As a political science student, I believe our governance models aren’t keeping pace with 2023. One of the reasons you see voter drop and apathy within the political spectrum is because our system, service delivery and governance models aren’t doing what they need to do. Our society is changing quickly, and we’re just not up to the mark. Because of that, people don’t want to pay attention to what’s going on in politics. So as a Mayor, what I wanted to do and what I was hoping to do with my council is to change the way we do governance in Cobourg.

Within the first seven months of my term, we’ve done an extensive customer service delivery review, where we’re looking at every single touch point of our constituents to see how they interact with the government and how we can provide better services because that’s what government does. It’s a service provider. We’ve got the report back, and now we’re implementing site specific ways to change how we interact with the public.

The other thing we’ve done is a complete governance review where we are rethinking how we’re doing everything from our committees to our chairing to the number of meetings. We’re moving from a committee of the whole style of governance model to a standing committee style. We’ve done a lot in community outreach to bring in more voices because we want to know, what does the public feel? Why are we not doing a good job?

You asked what my vision is. Sometimes when you are a shipbuilder, you don’t get to be the guy that sails the ship. And what we’re doing right now in Cobourg is we are rebuilding the ship. What I’m focused on is where we’re going to sail it. We have, as a council, just decided our priorities.

Being a beach town, sea level rise is a looming threat because of climate change. How are you preparing for that?

Upon taking office, seven months ago, one of the first things I ensured we did was maintain a partnership with a group called the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. It’s an incredible cross-boundary organisation with the United States, Canada and most recently with some of the indigenous nations on the Quebec side. It’s a massive working group addressing the effects of climate change on our Great Lakes and St Lawrence Seaway, which are vital to so much of the Midwest, the Eastern seaboard, and Canada. Remember, 75 per cent of Canadians live within a hundred kilometre distance from the US border. Great Lakes is the largest freshwater system that we have and protecting it is a massive priority.

You were asking what we are doing. Well, several things. Right now, we’re doing a coastal study of all five of the Great Lakes. The US Corps of Marine Engineers just finished doing the analysis on the US side and identified where the problems lie so that we can set our priorities as to where we have to worry about erosion and where we have to worry about algae.

This is the adaptation part? But what are you doing to mitigate climate change?

We’ve got several massive programs, whether it is aggressive tree canopy, electrification of vehicles, municipal charging stations, or building green standard buildings within the city. We’re looking at a variety of different methodologies at the municipal level and the provincial level. Since I don’t sit at the province level, I can’t speak about a lot of their mandates. But when you look at Northumberland County and Cobourg, the two councils I sit on, literally hundreds and hundreds of different legislations are being passed regularly to stay ahead in mitigation efforts.

We talked about initiatives that Cobourg is taking in different domains, whether it is climate change, solid waste management or circular economy, but what is your primary concern? What do you think needs to be tackled immediately?

I’m going to push back on you here. I don’t actually worry and here’s why. I believe humans are the most adaptable creatures on Earth. We have been around in one form or another for 1.6 million years. I mean, Homo sapiens only the last, say 60-70,000, but we’ve been around for over a million years. I look at today as the best day in human history, tomorrow will be even better, and the day after that will be better than the day before. So I don’t look at it as something to be worried about. Instead, I try to focus on what we need to do to make things better. Always looking forward and never looking back, which I think is a key attribute of leadership, especially in the political realm. Maybe it’s because I’m new, I still have the ambition and the optimism. I don’t think I’ll stay in politics if I don’t keep that ambition and optimism because there’s nothing I’m worried about. After all, worrying doesn’t do anything.

How has been your experience of attending the U20 Mayors’ Summit in Ahmedabad?

This was an incredible experience. To be the interim mayor of seven or eight months to a town of 25,000 and yet to have the honour to come to this event, speaks to the quality of work one by the people that have come before me in Cobourg. I couldn’t believe the quality of the events, cultural interactions and plenary sessions, and speaking at the U20 event was a great opportunity.