Vancouver expands food scraps recycling program

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      The City of Vancouver is expanding its recycling program to allow residents to include their food scraps in yard trimmings bins.

      The expansion, announced by Mayor Gregor Robertson today (September 11), will apply to about 90,000 single-family homes across Vancouver.

      The voluntary initiative is intended to get residents used to composting their food scraps in the lead-up to 2015, when a Metro Vancouver ban on organic materials in landfills and incinerators will take effect.

      “That gives people an opportunity to get used to it, get accustomed to putting all of their food scraps in a bin in their kitchen, putting it all in their green bin in their lane,” Robertson told reporters.

      In 2010, the residential food scraps recycling program was introduced to allow some items to be composted in yard trimmings bins, such as uncooked fruits and vegetables, coffee grounds, egg shells, and teabags. Now, all food scraps will be accepted, including meat, fish, bones, dairy, bread, cooked items and food-soiled paper. Scraps can be wrapped in newspaper or paper bag liners.

      The expanded recycling program, which takes effect today, applies to all houses and duplexes.

      According to the city, about 40 percent of the garbage currently sent to the landfill consists of food scraps and other naturally compostable materials.

      “One of the great outcomes of this is if you think about it, it’s the food scraps going in the dump that creates all the methane, that creates the odour—and methane is a terrible greenhouse gas,” said city engineer Peter Judd.

      “It’s 20 times more potent than C02. So if you take all that food waste out of the landfill, you’ll be generating much less gas.”

      City staff are expected to go before council this fall with a plan to expand the program to require businesses and multi-unit residential buildings to have food scraps recycling services in place.

      There will be no immediate change in the garbage collection schedule under the expansion announced today. Blue recycling boxes and regular garbage bins will continue to be collected once a week, while yard trimming bins will be collected every two weeks.

      Another change scheduled to come to city council for approval in the coming months will see the garbage collection service reduced to every other week, and yard trimmings and food waste collection increased to once a week.

      Comments

      5 Comments

      anonymouse1962

      Sep 11, 2012 at 8:21pm

      What's the other 60% that goes into the landfill? Torn down houses that are actually liveable for most people.

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      Bone

      Sep 12, 2012 at 8:56am

      Excellent, what's not to like? Too many whiners in the world.

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      Save Vancouver

      Sep 12, 2012 at 11:58pm

      @anonymouse1962 - You won't catch Mayor Moonbeam doing anything that might cross his developer sugardaddies. Houses and neighbourhoods are expendable.

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      Colin Bell

      Sep 17, 2012 at 11:06am

      If you're worried about your bin getting disgustingly dirty and attracting rats, flies, etc. check I just got a flyer from a company that cleans food scraps/yard waste and garbage bins. Only $8 a month in Vancouver which is the same price as a trip to Starbucks.
      www.washmybin.com.

      I'm going to use my bin for all food scraps but I'm not keen on how dirty it will get especially in the summer. I might try these guys out and see how it goes.

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      Greg "the dictator" Robinson

      Jul 14, 2013 at 11:58am

      Well it has been a few weeks into this food scraps recycling program. All I have to report it that the alleys stink of garbage and my green bins is full of maggots.

      I am not about to spend money to purchase those degradable bags for the food scraps and we do not get new papers nor flyers. Even if we do, they go in the blue bin.

      Colin, please do try out your own business. Good luck

      0 0Rating: 0