TOO GOOD TO WASTE The Breakdown on Green Bin Composting

This past spring, over 60,000 new green carts rolled out across Saskatoon. Although the program is new here, it’s by no means novel. The city of Halifax was the first large municipality in Canada to adopt a separate organics program in 1998— 25 years ago. It coincided with a ban on organic waste in landfills throughout Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island followed suit the same year, as did Vancouver in 2015. When the City of Saskatoon launched its subscriptionbased green cart program back in 2007, Cheryl McDougall was an early adopter. Although she’s been diverting her yard waste and kitchen scraps for

16 years now (in addition to using a backyard compost), she was excited to learn that the new program will allow her to compost a wider array of household waste than what was previously accepted under the subscription program.

“You can put everything in there now,” she says. Dairy, meat, bones, cooking oil, sauces and grease can all go in the new carts. Where she once would have scraped her plates into the garbage, she’s now able to divert it into her green bin “because you couldn’t have any fats in the green cart before,” she says. “There will hardly be any garbage anymore.”

That’s what the City of Saskatoon is hoping. It’s estimated that more than half of what was once destined for the garbage can now go into the green carts, to create nutrient-rich compost and extend the lifecycle of our landfill.

Preserving the Landfill, Protecting the Planet

“The City has a 70 per cent waste diversion target and we think we can achieve that within the next decade,” says Katie Burns, manager of education and environmental performance with the City of Saskatoon. “We really want to preserve our landfill…it’s very close and convenient.”

Katie says the City has witnessed what happens in other cities when landfills run out of space. They end up being built further away “so there’s increased staffing and trucking costs” in addition to the capital costs of developing a new landfill. Building a new landfill in

Saskatoon is estimated to cost $100 million.

There’s still a common misconception that organic material will decompose properly in a landfill. It won’t, says Katie.

“Organics have two really negative outcomes for our landfill that we have to work hard to manage. One of them is called leachate. It’s a kind of garbage juice that can contaminate our water and soil. Our landfill is lined, but we are constantly monitoring the water and soil around it to make sure it’s not leaking. If we can get rid of the source of the problem, that will make the future care of our landfill, and the lands around it, easier.”

The second issue is the creation of methane—a greenhouse gas. When organics are buried in a landfill, it creates an anaerobic (oxygen-deprived) environment. “Instead of breaking down in a way that creates good soil, it creates