Submitted by Will Arscott 15^th of March 2017

MEETING RECAP - Meeting at Bessborough: Loraas Disposal: Re-Cycling in Saskatoon

 

In the absence of president Jack the meeting was presided by Incoming President Mark Gryba

Greeter - Gary Kerr

Cashier - Paul Gauthier

Set-up - Al Morton

Visitors and Guests - Mike Giesbrecht

 

O Canada - was sung rather well by the club

 

Grace - Our ‘Gracia’ was led by Bev Johnson who did the grace in English.

 

Visitors and Guests - Mike Giesbrecht

Our guests were our speakers from Loraas Disposal

Ryan Buhay - the current manager who is off to start a new job in Vancouver.

Dale Schmidt - Ryan’s replacement who becomes official in a week.

Jenna Kurzen - in her second day with Loraas who is an education grad and will be handling public education for Loraas.

 

 

Serving at the Friendship Inn - There is no regular meeting next week as the club is serving at the Friendship Inn. Peter Zakreski will be back and will contact the members (email?) to remind them of their shifts. In the past this service has been rewarding and educational.

 

No Meeting Easter Monday - It was determined by a vote of the members that there will be no Meeting on Easter Monday April 17^th. In order not to miss two meetings there will be a meeting on Monday April 10^th ahead of the Badge Shield and Star Dinner on the 12^th. In the past there have not been regular meetings the week of the BS&S.

 

Grocery Cards are available from Gary Rusu. He is back this week appearing fully healthy and waiting to take your order.

 

Badge Shield and Star Dinner - save the date April 12^th for this event. The guest speaker is the retired fire chief of Wood Buffalo (Fort MacMurray) Darby Allan who will speak of the fire and evacuation. The price is unchanged ($125). We have a donor for the meal so the ticket price goes largely to our projects. The tickets are printed and will be available at meetings. Picatic is up and running and you can get a ticket there (Mark Gryba checked the system out and got his ticket. The Picatic address is: https://www.picatic.com/BadgeShieldStar2017 [go to Picatic and you will be able to find it.] Tim Cholowski reported that a series of events are planned for Chief Allan including a luncheon at Firehall #1. The day after the dinner our guest will meet with students at Bedford Road.

The success of the dinner depends on a full house so sell, sell, sell! Sponsorship is $2,000 which gives you recognition on the overhead boards and an eight person table. You can also buy an eight person table for $1,000.

 

Adventures in Technology (AIT) - Steve Wilson reported that the places for billets and drivers are being filled but more are still needed. Please put your name on the pages on the table. Billets are responsible for housing one or two students. The student’s days are full so they need a place to sleep, have breakfast and a ride to the assembly point for the day. The students will likely be too tired to do much once they arrive back to need much entertainment. We need billeting from Sunday April 23^rd through Thursday April 27th. We also need drivers for fifteen person vans. This is a full day responsibility meeting at the collection point and driving through the day. The drivers will participate in meals and be able to partake of the programs that day. It would be quite interesting. We need drivers from Sunday April 23^rd through Friday April 28^th. Please check your schedule and help out if you can help.

 

Masters of Golf Pool -the tickets are printed and are available. A copy has been emailed to the members. It is a little unfortunate that this project falls so close to the BS&S Dinner but it is also an important and separate project. Most tickets are sold to non-Rotarians. The costs of the project are donated and we get a 25% top-up of our earnings from the SLGA. This is an easy and worthwhile project. The money raised has to be spent in Saskatchewan so we can use the money to benefit RAP and our scholarship program at Sask Polytechnic. Please support this project.

 

Rotateller - On the 20^th we are doing service at the Friendship Inn so there will be no regular Rotateller. The following three weeks the sun has called Will down to Arizona. Steve Wilson has done a fine job of the Rotateller but he has taken on quite enough with AIT. Do we have a volunteer or two? You simply write the meeting up as best you can and email it to Gord M. Please email Will if you can help. It would be great to have people in place before he leaves on this trip.

 

 

Will Arscott announced the passing of long-time member Bill East in Victoria. Bill joined our club in 1965 and was a member through to the time he and Shirley moved to Victoria to be closer to their two oldest children. Bill was involved in many projects. He introduced Will into our club in 1988.

 

The passing of Bill is the end of a major family connection to our club. Bill’s grandfather John East was a member to our club being inducted in February of 1919 (only 18 months after the initial formation of the club) and serving as president for the 1930-31 Rotary Year. Bill’s Dad was Mel East who, as far as we can determine, was not a member of the club. Our members of a certain age will remember the John East Iron Works which was a black smoke industrial plant located on 22^nd street on the north side between Avenue C and D. Will thanked Al Morton for his help in finding the East information in the club archives. Al also wrote a short article on the East Family and their business which is attached to this Rotateller.

 

Sergeant at Arms: Dave Sundby

 

Fined Gord M for talking during the announcement of Bill East’s passing. Tim Cholowski offered a $5 fine for being part of the conversation. It is sad that a member comes down to a short announcement at a meeting. It is a time when we all need to be respectful. Tim was also fined for advertising.

 

Mark Gryba was quite properly fined for being late. He claimed he could not leave his patient. This is Mark’s fault as he is the one that decided to become a dentist and not a dental monitor.

 

Heather C was fined for missing the announcement about there being no meeting on Easter Monday.

 

 

H Mark G for his week in Chicago which he enjoyed and would recommend to others. Chicago is a very cultural city.

 

H&S Dave S for the Husky women going winning the Can-West and then going to nationals and losing in the first round.

 

H For the Gushue rink winning the Brier.

 

 

 

Dave S introduced speaker Ryan. No! Not that speaker Ryan - the speaker Ryan from Loraas disposal. This was to be the last of many talks Ryan Buhay has given on behalf of Loraas. He is in the process of moving on to bigger and better things in Vancouver. Ryan was accompanied by his successor Dale Schmidt and Jenna Kurzen from Loraas.

 

Ryan said his purpose was to briefly explain what recycling can and cannot do. Loraas contracts the blue bins with the city and runs a single stream recycling program. This means that all recyclable materials are collected in a single bin and machine sorted. This is the easiest system from the point of view of the consumer.

 

Loraas operate a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). It is located on First Avenue North near The Brick and employs thirty-eight to forty people on any given day. The material is sorted using a set of ‘stars’ and conveyor belts. Stars are spiked wheels somewhat similar to the Rotary wheel. They sort the material by type and size. The separated materials are baled and sold for re-use.

 

100 to 150 tonnes of material are processed each day. This is the equivalent of $10,000 blue buckets. Each week 30 to 40 truckloads of recyclable material are taken out of the plant to market. Loraas had the first single-stream MRF in the province. The conveyor system used to sort is complex. The system was made by a company in the Netherlands where recycling is much more developed.

 

Most consumers are most concerned about what they can recycle :

 

Paper: If you can rip it you can recycle it. Flat is better because paper is sorted by shape. Heavily plasticized paper is not recyclable. Recycled paper is made back into pulp and used in applications like the middle (corrugated) layer in cardboard. Shredded paper can be recycled but needs to be bagged. If it is not bagged no machine can separate it. The only two items that should be bagged in your recycle are shredded paper and bags of plastic bags.

 

Plastic: Many items made of plastic have a number that identifies the type of resin the plastic was produced from. Resin’s #1 through #7 can be recycled. In general this means that household containers can be recycled. Many industrial plastics cannot be recycled. People often ask about bottle tops. The answer is that they cannot be recycled. This is not because of the plastic they are produced from but because the equipment cannot handle an object as small as a bottle cap. The rule of thumb is that if an object is the size of a credit card it may be recycled. If it is smaller it falls through the sorter and is sent to the landfill.

 

Metal: Household metal only, such as cans. Metal strapping is a constant problem. It cannot be recycled and will do damage to the sorting machinery.

 

Glass: Glass jars and bottles only. Flat glass such as windows cannot be recycled.

 

Food materials are the biggest problem. Food material attracts vermin. It will also lead to the final product being of less value or being rejected by the final buyer. Please try to ensure there are no food materials in your recycle. A little grease on a pizza box is not fatal but if it is soaked it cannot be recycled. The food contamination rate in Saskatoon is quite low and it would be good to keep it that way.

 

Styrofoam is also a problem and cannot be recycled. Styrofoam is 2% plastic and 98% air. It is difficult to handle and is not economically worthwhile to recycle.

 

Other items that show up that cannot be recycled are clothing, shoes and car seats. These items cannot be recycled. Putting gas cylinders in the recycle is dangerous for all concerned. Electronics and paint cannot be recycled through the blue bins but SARCAN Recycling has a program to cover these items.

 

 

Ryan went on give us some other reminders about recycling:

 

- Cardboard sizes have to be reasonable. The lid of the cart either has to close complete or not be up more than a few inches. Driver’s use their discretion about overfilled catts but emptying the overfilled carts can lead to spillage and a litter problem. On the other extreme, very small pieces cannot be sorted.

 

- Buckets should be set out with four feet of clearance and face towards the truck. You cannot empty a cart that faces backwards.

 

If you are unsure as to whether an item is recyclable you can check with the city website or on Loraas’ website. There is also a Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Website that has a huge amount of information.. Last year a program was started to tag recycle carts with orange and green tags to help people improve their recycling. This program has been a success.

 

Ryan told the story of his cat Spooky who went through the recycling process and survived unhurt.

 

Ryan, Dale and Jenna were thanked by Dave Sundby