Green cart for compost goes live (was trial)

[bigboom]

I pretty much only use the green bin for yard waste, it's nice not having to bag up clippings and what not, it just goes directly into the bin.

[SOAB]

a friend living in Chestermere does this. they have eliminated the black bin and limited each household to one black garbage bag a week so each house still has 2 bins. one for recycling and one for compostable materials.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[msommers]

Olds has had these for years and years, I think many places in Alberta as well. I think we're behind on this. I guess there could be an option to opt in or out of the cost or bins are a problem.

[NoSup4U]

I'm all for reducing our footprint and recycling as much as possible, but what irks me on this is the collection being scaled back to every other week.

Shit is going to get pretty rancid sitting there for two weeks in the warmer months.



How have you guys dealt with this in the test areas?

EDIT: Rereading, I guess the green and blue are weekly and now the black will be bi-weekly?

[nzwasp]

Originally posted by NoSup4U
I'm all for reducing our footprint and recycling as much as possible, but what irks me on this is the collection being scaled back to every other week.

Shit is going to get pretty rancid sitting there for two weeks in the warmer months. How have you guys dealt with this in the test areas?

I wonder if baby diapers are accepted in the green bins, They smell nasty in my black bin after less than 1 day in the warm sun. Can't even imagine the stench after 2 weeks.

edit: Found the faq:

What cannot go in green cart:

No plastic bags
No food or beverage packaging
No diapers or sanitary wipes

[schocker]

Originally posted by NoSup4U
I'm all for reducing our footprint and recycling as much as possible, but what irks me on this is the collection being scaled back to every other week.

Shit is going to get pretty rancid sitting there for two weeks in the warmer months. How have you guys dealt with this in the test areas?

Also every time I make room in the garage, more damn bins
I am going to look into mulching my grass instead though now instead of bagging everything.

[Ca_Silvia13]

2 weeks in between garbage pickup's isn't going to cut it at my house. I already bring bigger pieces that don't fit in the bins to work. The new pickup interval a dumb move.

[FraserB]

Originally posted by SOAB
a friend living in Chestermere does this. they have eliminated the black bin and limited each household to one black garbage bag a week so each house still has 2 bins. one for recycling and one for compostable materials.

You can get some pretty big contractor grade garbage bags. Not my problem if the garbage man isn't strong enough to lift 60lbs of stuff that has been triple bagged.

[phreezee]

The composting facility in southeast Calgary cost $143 million to build and the program will add $24 million to the waste and recycling services budget in 2017, and $30 million in 2018.

But yeah, we're doing it to save you money.

[you&me]

I have a feeling that once my black bin fills up, the excess will magically find its way into the blue or green bin...

[nickyh]

Originally posted by nzwasp


I wonder if baby diapers are accepted in the green bins, They smell nasty in my black bin after less than 1 day in the warm sun. Can't even imagine the stench after 2 weeks.

edit: Found the faq:

What cannot go in green cart:

No plastic bags
No food or beverage packaging
No diapers or sanitary wipes

My kid is 13 months old now, i had better get her toilet trained by the time this kicks in. Two weeks of diapers / wipes, oh boy that garage is going to reek in the summer.
THank god she's in a dayhome weekdays so we have less shit to throw out.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[bigboom]

I live in a test area and it's not actually that bad and this is with 2 kids in diapers. As long as you keep your diapers in a diaper genie the smell doesn't get too rank. Most of the smell is from old food scraps anyways which gets picked up every week.

By the end of two weeks the garbage bin is full but id seriously question anyone who needs a full black bin pick up every week along with recycle and compost. You either aren't recycling properly or consume a LOT.

Your yard waste goes directly into the green bin as well so it doesn't go in your black bin. You can also bag your yard waste in compostable paper bags on top of the bin collection and they will come pick it up as well.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Garbage pickup will be scaled back to every other week once the green carts are in place, with the city arguing there will be much less waste once Calgarians start composting.

Does council seriously think that compostable waste makes up 50% of our garbage? We don't absolutely need weekly garbage pickups, but it's really nice for those weeks where you end up with a bunch of unrecyclable packing materials to throw out.

Of course there's no opt-out for folks like us who have been doing our own composting for ages and have literally zero use for the green bins.

[tirebob]

I can say we have been on the green bin in Airdrie going on 3 years now and it really works well. There are a lot of benefits to this that go over and above the environmental impact as well.

Talking just about the dollars and cents of it all, I know as a city, we pay $109/ton tipping fees for our residential garbage, but for organics we pay only $59/ton to recycle, and because organics actually makes up over 50% of the actual weight of most garbage, even though we pay an extra $4.72/month on our utilities (in Airdrie), it save us on the backend and it ends up costing less overall. Tipping fees are also increasing at a crazy rate with costs expected to be closing in on $200/ton over then next few years. Airdrie is a bit unique maybe in that we are charged for garbage collection on our utilities based on the exact previous years costs of disposal divided by the number of single family home tax paying base (condo/townhomes and businesses are private pick up).

For the moment, we are still allowed two full size garbage bags (or garbage cans) a week for regular garbage, but we will be moving to single bag soon. We are a family of four with 2 teens. With recycling our organics and the usual recycling, we generally fill one kitchen catcher sized garbage bag per week, and sometimes two. It really is easy as pie.

There was a ton of pushback when Airdrie launched this, but now that it has been out for a couple years now (plus pilot project year), the feedback is overwhelmingly positive.

Just to let you know, I am intimately familiar with the goings on with recycling from the city perspective because when this first came out in Airdrie, my house was included in the pilot project and I was initially quite hesitant and because of that, I got involved with what was happening and investigating the ins and outs of the project, and eventually applied for and was awarded a position of the Environmental Advisory Board to city council for Airdrie as a resident advisor (unpaid volunteer position). I wanted to be able to know from the inside what was happening and not just rely on the propaganda being said by both sides of the argument.

In the end, it really is a good thing overall whether people want to acknowledge it or not. Mostly I think people just fixate on one or two aspects and don't look at the overall picture, both environmentally and fiscally, because if they did they should see an entirely different picture.

If anyone is genuinely interested and would like to ask me any questions, feel free to message or e-mail me. I would be happy to provide and info I can from the perspective of a resident who has been through this and became heavily involved in the process at both the residential and city level.

[suntan]

Originally posted by msommers
Olds has had these for years and years, I think many places in Alberta as well. I think we're behind on this. I guess there could be an option to opt in or out of the cost or bins are a problem.

Many places also allow you to have smaller bins for a reduced charge.

I'm sure one of Nenshi's consulting buddies will get the contract for the steering committee on that one.

[Aleks]

Originally posted by bigboom
I live in a test area and it's not actually that bad and this is with 2 kids in diapers. As long as you keep your diapers in a diaper genie the smell doesn't get too rank. Most of the smell is from old food scraps anyways which gets picked up every week.

By the end of two weeks the garbage bin is full but id seriously question anyone who needs a full black bin pick up every week along with recycle and compost. You either aren't recycling properly or consume a LOT.

Your yard waste goes directly into the green bin as well so it doesn't go in your black bin. You can also bag your yard waste in compostable paper bags on top of the bin collection and they will come pick it up as well.

So with the green bin if you're not allowed plastic bags or food containers how do you dump the food scraps in there? paper bags? just dump the garbage bag out from your house into it?

[tirebob]

Originally posted by Aleks


So with the green bin if you're not allowed plastic bags or food containers how do you dump the food scraps in there? paper bags? just dump the garbage bag out from your house into it?

You can use compostable bags. They are avilable as a compostable plastic that breaks down in just a few weeks or paper. All the grocery stores in Airdrie now carry them and Costco as well.

[Neil4Speed]

Originally posted by suntan
I'm sure one of Nenshi's consulting buddies will get the contract for the steering committee on that one.

Based on?....

He isn't Dave Bronconnier