WEEKEND EXTRA: Kitchen scraps to be banned from trash across Metro Vancouver everything, Metro, house

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WEEKEND EXTRA: Kitchen scraps to be banned from trash across Metro Vancouver
After changes made, most area cities will reduce garbage collection to once every two weeks, with organics picked up weekly


By the end of next year, if you live in a house in Metro Vancouver, your kitchen scraps will be banned from the trash.

That means everything from apples cores to chicken bones, bread crusts, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags, paper towels and pizza boxes must be in your green bin instead of the garbage can.

Port Coquitlam, which started its kitchen scraps program in 2007, has been followed by Burnaby, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Moody, Richmond and Vancouver, which signed on last year. The North Shore will start programs this spring, while the other municipalities will be on board by the end of the year.

Once the plans are in place, most Metro Vancouver cities will reduce garbage collection to every two weeks and pick up the organics weekly.

“We’re all in this together,” said Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, chairman of Metro’s waste management committee. “We’re seeing lots of success around the region.”

The push is part of Metro Vancouver’s Zero Waste challenge, an ambitious goal to recycle 70 per cent of the region’s waste by 2015 — up from 55 per cent now — and 80 per cent by 2020.

To get there, Metro Vancouver must compost 265,000 tonnes of organics — roughly enough to fill a quarter of BC Place Stadium with compact garbage — each year. Metro residents dump about 3.4 million tonnes of garbage annually.

Moore maintains it can be done. His city, which increased its recycling rate for kitchen scraps from 50 per cent to 62 per cent in the past year, uses Facebook, its solid waste calendar and newsletters sent with tax notices to remind residents to recycle.

“This has to be ingrained in everything you do,” Moore said. “We know that about 40 per cent of all garbage is from the kitchen so why wouldn’t we try to divert that to a more environmental and cheaper way of doing things?”

The cost of collecting organics and kitchen scraps from the curb, is about $60 a tonne, compared with $97 a tonne in tipping fees for trash. The waste is taken to Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre, which is contracted to collect up to 50,000 tonnes annually and turn it into compost.

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Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore demonstrates how the green food scraps program works at his Port Coquitlam home on Friday, February 18, 2011.

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Within the next 18 months, Metro Vancouver expects to see more kitchen scraps being diverted to compost as more municipalities come on board and the region slaps a ban on kitchen scraps in transfer stations. The region is also calling for more disposal ban inspections and increased fines for infractions.

Violators — who could be garbage contractors, residents or city workers — caught at the transfer station dumping kitchen scraps in with garbage face a fine that’s twice the price of the $97-a-tonne garbage tipping fee.

Toivo Allas, Metro’s manager of policy and planning, estimates hundreds of fines were issued last year, but said more inspectors are needed and “the penalties have to be more severe.

“You have to make throwing waste away to disposal very expensive,” he said.

Meanwhile, Metro plans to focus this year on boosting recycling in multi-family housing and businesses, which will face a similar disposal ban in 2015.

Few multi-family homes and businesses compost organics because of a lack of space, limited access for recycling collections, and few processing facilities that can accept large amounts of food scraps. Metro plans to issue a request for proposals this year for more processing plants in the region.

Multi-family residents have a recycling rate of 16 per cent compared with 46 per cent for single-family residents, 44 per cent for business and institutions and 76 per cent for construction and demolition.

Metro plans to urge municipalities to enact bylaws to ensure buildings have room for recycling. But Allas said that’s a challenge, noting in Vancouver, small four-storey apartment buildings had to sacrifice parking spaces for a green bin.

And even then, there’s no incentive to ensure everyone is recycling. “That’s the whole dilemma we have with recycling,” Allas said. “Regardless of all the rules and regulations, the success depends on the voluntary participation of residents and businesses.”

Metro Vancouver is in discussions to start similar food scraps program with supermarkets, restaurants and the hospitality industry.