By Cheryl Jahn

Organic Recycling

City considers organics collection

Jan 16, 2020 | 4:07 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – As Council heard during the most recent budget meeting is a plan to look at the feasibility of the City establishing curbside recycling of organic materials.

That’s because a waste characterisation study of what winds up in the landfill from Prince George residents’ garbage bins showed a high proportion of organics, such as yard waste and kitchen scraps.

When the blue box recycling system came into play here in 2015, it removed a lot of cardboard and cans from the waste stream in Prince George. Those are lighter materials. But the City says, after all those years, the tonnage of waste sent to the landfill has not dropped and the City suspects that may be because residents are throwing different waste, like organics, into their garbage cans.

“The stuff that is moving into the garbage cans is heavier. So we’ve decreased the space taken up [in the garbage can] by those light plastics, those are being recycled, and anecdotally, there is more space for the heavier organic material,” says Gina Layte Liston, Director of Public Works.

But the Regional District of Fraser Fort George says it’s not as simple as setting up another bin at the curb.

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“It’s not just a matter of giving you another bin, you put it in and Bob’s your uncle,” explains Rachael Ryder, the Regional District’s Waste Diversion Program Leader. “There’s the collection, the processing, educating your customers so they put the right things in the right bins. So it is a quite intensive process to develop.”

The Regional District already collects yard waste at the Foothills Landfill, as well as the transfer stations around the city.