Greater Sudbury is expanding its waste diversion program for meeting provincial recycling targets and extending the life of the main landfill site — to include organic waste from fruits and vegetables to meat and bones, sauces and gravy, dairy products, fish and seafood etc. It also includes non-recyclable paper such as microwave popcorn bags.
Danielle Braney, the city’s acting director of solid waste said,
We are mandated to meet provincial standards of 60 percent diversion by 2008… Currently Greater Sudbury keeps 38 percent of waste from going to our landfill. Organics represent 30 percent of the waste stream. If we fully implemented this compost recovery program we could beat our guidelines by diverting 65 percent by 2009.
To help the project work successfully, over 1,000 Sudbury residents — selected in all 12-city wards — are being involved for testing out the new program. All of them have been given a white organic kitchen catcher with compostable bags, green animal-proof organic curbside container and an information kit for putting in their new containers.
If it is successful, all Sudbury residents could be participating in a year!
