Editor's note: The following does not affect Barrie or Orillia residents, as those cities manage their own waste collection.
Hang on to your banana peel, because going green could get a little bit easier for area residents living in multi-residential buildings.
The County of Simcoe is preparing to embark on an 18-month, multi-residential organics pilot program, which will see approximately 600 units in buildings across the region take part, said Laura Barrett, the county's manager of waste collection.
The county launched its existing curbside collection of organics in 2008, and the county is currently mandated to collect from all residential properties with five or fewer units, she said.
“Organics going into the garbage is always a concern for the county. We realize that multi-residential locations don’t actually have a lot of opportunities to have the ability to divert organics from landfills because there are not a lot of private companies out there that do it,” Barrett told BarrieToday.
“We felt it was an important pilot to bring forward in order to see the feasibility of doing organics at multi-residential locations … because we would like to divert as much from the landfill as we can," she added.
If approved by council at its Nov. 14 meeting, the plan would be to launch the pilot in the spring of 2024, said Barrett. County staff would then begin working on selecting which buildings in which communities will be part of the pilot.
“It’s all a learning process for us. We have to investigate different types of buildings … and we are going to pick between eight and 12 multi-residential properties, approximately 600 units in total,” Barrett said. “We are working with our own county social housing buildings and are going to pick a few of those (as well as) some private locations … and they will be varying sizes.”
The hope is to get a solid 12 months of data that covers all four seasons in the various communities, she said, some of which often see an ebb and flow of residents during different months of the year.
The plan is for staff to bring the information collected to county council prior to the project ending. Councillors would then make the decision whether or not to continue with it.
“If they say yes … then there wouldn’t be any disruption, so we are going to go to council prior to the 18 months is up," added Barrett.
The pilot program is expected to cost approximately $45,000 over 18 months and includes costs for promotion and educational content, bags and auditing supplies, as well as for the collection of organics from each location. Staff are expecting three front-end bins and approximately 25 carts will be required to collect organics from all of the participating locations.
While the cost of the front-end bins and their collection have been reflected in the total cost of the pilot program, Miller Waste, the county’s contracted waste collector, has opted to waive any additional fees for providing organics cart collection at participating pilot program properties, according to an Oct. 23 staff report. That will allow the company to determine the impact of a county-wide program and those associated costs.
Additional operational costs will be incurred in the haulage and processing of the organics collected through the pilot program, however the quantity of materials that will be collected is unknown, therefore those expenses will be funded from operating surplus or waste management contingency reserve fund in 2024.
This past spring, the county says it hit 200,000 tonnes of organics diverted since first launching the program in 2008, said Barrett, but there is definitely room for improvement, she added.
“We are really just stressing that organics in the garbage is not an environmentally responsible thing to do, so we are trying to encourage people to use their organics as much as possible," Barrett said. "Even now, with our curbside program, more than 40 per cent of what is going to the landfill is organics, which we would like to encourage residents to put in the green bin."
During the recent committee of the whole meeting, one member of council questioned how this type of program can be “policed” or tracked.
Barrett told BarrieToday that, in addition to conducting a waste audit prior to implementing the program, the plan will be to conduct “extensive waste auditing” throughout the 18-month project.
“Part of that might just be a visual audit where we go to the site and just look at their cart and see what they have, but we will more where we actually go through the material, weigh it and look at contamination,” she explained.
Barrett also acknowledged that contamination rates may be higher in multi-residential locations versus regular curbside locations.
“If we find through those results that there is more contamination … then we will figure out the best way to educate residents," she added. “Hopefully it is successful and we can expand it. That would be the ultimate goal.”
