Bowen Bulletin

While the “Burning at Eddie’s Pit” story is quite an interesting tale of a classic Catch 22 it has also brought to the forefront a whole series of discussions about waste management and CO2 reduction.

First of all the basic facts; Eddie owns 60 acres of land on the side of Mount Gardner, above Adams Road. As part of his operation he receives and then burns tree debris and stumps. He has a state of the art set-up for open fires and now burns just once per year. The latest fire consumed 800 truckloads of material in just two days. When the Fire Chief gave Eddie the permit to burn he reminded him that new regulations pertaining to open burning are being considered so Eddie should not assume that he would get a permit next year; thus the Catch 22. If Eddie accepts another 800 loads of wood and then can’t get a permit, he will have a major problem. However, the primary licence to burn is issued by Metro Vancouver in keeping with both their policies and provincial legislation. The local Fire Chief assesses the local conditions and grants a permit after all of the other approvals are in place. The municipality can’t guarantee that a permit will be issued and Eddie doesn’t want to take the financial risk of accumulating wood if he’s going to be shut down.

But the real story is much larger than our local dilemma. Think about the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere when that much wood is burned. Then consider that this is only a portion of the wood burned every year on the island. Eddie’s problem stems partly from the fact that he has a business that is burning waste that has been trucked to his pit. The policies for dealing with burning on the site of the land clearing are much less onerous. It’s hard to figure out just how much CO2 is released every year on this island just from the burning of stumps, limbs and logs that aren’t worth enough to haul away. Currently you need a permit to transport wood waste from one site to another. My guess is that we aren’t far away from the time when you will be required to take your forest debris to an approved location for disposal.

Our understanding of the threat of global warming is finally starting to mobilize governments to address the problem and our municipality has undertaken to become carbon neutral by 2012. I’ve been trying to figure out how they plan to actually do it. My guess is that, if they’re really serious, they will have to buy carbon credits to meet their (our) obligations. Carbon credits cost real money. The buyer puts CO2 into the atmosphere but then pays the seller for either taking CO2 out of the atmosphere or sequestering carbon which would normally be escaping as CO2.

One way to stop CO2 from going into the atmosphere is to reduce wood to biochar in a closed container rather than burning it. The concept is ancient. If you put wood in a sealed container and heat it, volatile gases are given off. If you put a small hole in the container the expanding gases shoot out and when you burn them they heat the container causing more hot gases to come out.  Eventually all that is left in the container is charcoal, which is 80% pure carbon. Typically this was used as a fuel for cooking but the tribes in the Amazon rainforest used it to enhance their soil, which it did very nicely. The biochar (charcoal) that they added to their soil is still there 1000 years later. This is a big deal. Al Gore’s book “Our Choice” explores the things that we could do to save the world and biochar is near the top.

We have the opportunity to reduce air pollution, offset some of our CO2 production, turn our wood waste into a soil enhancer, and promote a local industry. The question is, if this is such a great idea why isn’t somebody already doing it? The short answer is that, up until now there has been no financial incentive to do it. The quickest, easiest and cheapest way to get rid of wood waste is to simply burn it. At the end of the day the business case for producing biochar will be made when government regulations tip the playing field. Concerns over air pollution, forest fires and greenhouse gases are leading to more and more stringent rules. Converting from open air burning to biochar production could be a nice little green collar local industry. And with luck there should be some money to be made selling carbon credits.