NEWS: City marks Earth Day with new composting program

Fruit and vegetable scraps discarded in the kitchen make up a large part of the garbage produced by many Vancouver households. This is especially true of apartments, where outdoor composting isn’t commonly accessible. As part of new efforts to make composting easier — and, thus, more widespread — the City of Vancouver will launch a biweekly curbside compost collection program on Earth Day (April 22).

The first phase of the three-phase program will allow homeowners to add fruit and vegetable scraps to their yard trimmings, to be picked up twice a month. The initiative eventually aims to integrate composting programs for apartment residents and the business community, both of which currently use private waste-disposal companies.

“At this point, it’s too early to tell when something will happen [with multi-family residential buildings and the business community],” Chris Underwood, general manager of engineering services, told city council March 4. “At the earliest, I would expect it to be six to 12 months.”

Council unanimously supported Underwood’s recommendation to approve the first phase of the compost-collection program, which will cost an estimated $230,000 to start. Communications strategies for the program make up a significant portion of those funds. “The major initiative involves a fundamental change in people’s behaviour and how their waste is collected,” reads Underwood’s report on the program, which was presented to council earlier this month. “This program is similar to the Burrard Street cycling lane project in that strong communications can help defuse potential apprehension caused by lack of understanding.”

For longtime sustainability advocate and Zero Waste Vancouver coordinator Helen Spiegelman, the City’s communications strategy will do much to determine the program’s success or failure. “The way this program fails is when people don’t understand the why and the what and the how,” she told council March 4. “We have to start giving people the sense that we are shooting for cutting our waste in half, and getting every scrap of organics out of our landfill. So, the communications [have] to be holistic.”

The environmental gains from a successful residential composting program could be dramatic. City staff estimate that food waste (fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, bread, and food-soiled paper) from  single-family residences in Vancouver is approximately 15,700 tonnes per year. Given these measures, composting food scraps alongside yard trimmings could raise the waste-diversion rate for single-family homes by more than half.

“This is a moment I’ve been waiting for for a long time,” Spiegelman said. “It will be the most transformative recycling initiative in the city.”