Township council has endorsed the expansion of the organics collection program.
Starting on May 3, all residents will be required to add their scraps into their yard trimmings container, rather than with general household rubbish.
This purpose is twofold: It allows residents, such as those who live in multi-family housing where communal composting does not exist, to dispose of their waste wisely, and it helps divert re-usable material from landfills.
The collected material will be taken to The Answer Garden Products in Abbotsford, which has been processing materials for composting for 18 years. It handles the Township’s garden trimmings material.
A report to council listed a number of items that can be added to the garden debris bin: baked goods, breads, grains and pasta; coffee grounds, filters and tea bags; dairy products; eggs and eggshells; fruit and vegetables; meat, fish and bones; nuts and their shells; miscellaneous kitchen scraps, and soiled paper products such as kitchen towels and napkins.
The winners are the environment and taxpayers. The program will turn people’s kitchen and garden scraps into compost, while at the same time diverting the materials from landfills.
The price of tipping rubbish into these dumps is about to increase significantly over the next few years, said the Township’s operations manager David Pollock.
They are to rise from the current fee of $97 per tonne to $182 per tonne by 2015.
Pollock advised that this year, between 700 and 1,800 tonnes of kitchen waste will end up at The Answer Garden Products instead of a landfill.
“By diverting food scraps from the waste stream, the waste disposal costs will be reduced significantly as the cost for processing organics is considerably lower,” he said.
This year alone, the program will save Township taxpayers between $40,000 and $106,000.