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Rollinson introduces himself as an “abatement falconer” in person and a “wildlife control technician” on LinkedIn. He and his bird are key components of what staff call a “highly engineered” ecosystem that manages millions of tons of refuse.

It’s Toronto’s only active landfill and it’s at a turning point. Like the 160 shuttered sites that preceded it, it’s about to hit capacity. It has an estimated 10 years worth of space left, unless it’s expanded, which its neighbours, the Oneida of the Thames, who live about three kilometres downwind, previously told the Star they are vehemently opposed to.Ìý

“Imagine stepping outside your home and being met with the stench of decay — rotting food, burned plastic, putrid waste — all without your consent,” reads the opening line of an op-ed by the Oneida Nation of the Thames Council, published in the Star in May.Ìý“This has been the reality for Oneida Nation of the Thames for nearly two decades.”

When Rollinson flies his falcon, he does it standing on one of several 40-metre high mounds of trash in the landfill, which have been entombed in dirt and gravel and form the core of a grassy hillscape.Ìý

It’s a remarkably unremarkable space. The experience of standing on a hill built out of garbage is in no way dissimilar from that of standing on one of nature’s own. Some even have park benches.

In the valley of the landfill, there’s an employee who is contractually obligated to live there in a small house for security purposes. They’ve been there for several years, according to site manager Sara Little, enjoying, she said, the perks of “a good commute to work.” 

Little led reporters on a three-hour tour of her workplace Friday morning. They were kept away from the “active” area of the site — an open maw taking in truckloads of fresh garbage — and given a glimpse of the landfill’s future as parkland.

There was no discernable scent in the air throughout the visit, save for a short wave of putrefaction, a deep sulphurous funk, from compressed ‘90s trash being shoved around by trucks to form a ramp linking sections of the site.Ìý

Since 2020, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment has recorded an average of about 175 complaints about Green Lane each year, the vast majority related to odours attributed to the facility.

“The smell is fairly isolated to the active area,” Little said. “The wind has a lot of impact. It can carry odours off-site. Humidity, fog can hold odour in closer to the site. We don’t want to be bad neighbours. We work every day to make sure we’re trying to mitigate off-site odours.” 

Little, who has worked at the landfill since 2010, the year before it became Toronto’s main waste repository, is proud of the place and the enormous work she says happens behind its locked gates.

Her job is to help conduct the several hundred hulking vehicles in use across the 320-acre facility. Some spray down dust with water cannons. Others use tank treads to compact trash into gravel basins, crushing about a half a million tonnes of it each year. When their work is through and the trash is buried, the only indication of human intervention in the area are the fields of biogas valves left behind.Ìý

“When you do something well, you can make it look effortless,” she said. “There’s a lot of engineering going on here. This is not a dump. Dump is a four-letter word to us.

“There are dumps in existence, they dig a hole, put the garbage in and don’t look at it. That’s not what this is. We have a lot of technology and put in a lot of effort into the specifics of timing and design at this location.”