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Waste cart rollout starts Monday as Edmonton begins transition to source-separated collection

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Green and black waste carts started landing on some Edmonton driveways Monday in the first phase of the city’s transition to source-separated collection.

The new compost and garbage bins will be delivered to about 250,000 single-family households through six phases running until the end of August. Homes at the northernmost part of the city and in the southeast will be the first to receive carts between Monday and April 10, with collection under the new system set to begin the week of April 11. The schedule for the other five phases can be found on the city’s website.

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Under the new system, residents will be required to separate food and organic waste from garbage in an effort to divert more waste from landfills. The city’s long-term goal is to divert 90 per cent of waste from landfills and it only reached 21 per cent in 2019. It is projected the waste diversion continued to fall in 2020 to 17 per cent, partly due to COVID-19 impacts on processing capacity.

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Jodi Goebel, the city’s waste strategy director, said the move to source-separated collection is expected to improve diversion by 11 per cent on its own. This is a step in the right direction to meet the city’s short-term goal of 40 per cent waste diversion this year and 60 per cent in 2022, Goebel said.

“Anywhere between 40 and 60 per cent of the waste that Edmontonians throw out is organics, so food scraps and yard waste. But of course, we want to keep that separate from garbage so that we can just be that much more efficient with keeping that material out of landfill,” she said.

The green compost cart will be collected weekly from spring to fall and every two weeks in the winter. Garbage in the black cart will be collected every two weeks. Recycling will continue to be collected weekly in blue bags. Yard waste collection will occur twice in the spring and the fall with no size limits, but can also go into the green compost bin or dropped off at an eco station for free.

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New waste and organics carts are delivered by a city employee in a south Edmonton neighbourhood, Monday, March 15, 2021.
New waste and organics carts are delivered by a city employee in a south Edmonton neighbourhood, Monday, March 15, 2021. Photo by Ian Kucerak /Postmedia

In order to ensure enough processing capacity for the 68,000 tonnes of organics expected annually, the city is finalizing contracts with private contracted partners in the region as it remains without a composting facility that was urgently forced to close in May 2019 and a new one isn’t set to come online until 2025.

A newly-constructed anaerobic digester at the city’s waste management site will be able to process about 40,000 tonnes of organics annually and is set to come fully online when the source-separated collection begins next month.

Waste Free Edmonton co-founder Sean Stepchuk said this is a good first step that is a long time in the making to meet the city’s waste diversion goals, but he is also hoping to see the city clamp down on the use of items such as single-use plastics in the first place.

“Diversion shouldn’t even be the goal, it should be reduction,” he said. “A piece of packaging that never makes it into the waste stream never needs to be diverted.”

Residents have already had the chance to change from the default 240-litre garbage cart size to 120 litres. If the selected size doesn’t work out, another chance to switch will be available on April 6 or when carts are received, whichever is later.

More than 19,000 households made the switch to the smaller cart, accounting for eight per cent of curbside customers. Starting in October, those who opt for a smaller cart will see their monthly waste service fees drop by $3.90 and fees will increase by $1.10 a month for the 240-litre size. In order to ensure the automated collection of the new new carts runs smoothly, they must be placed one metre apart from each other as well as vehicles.

duscook@postmedia.com

twitter.com/dustin_cook3 

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