Town enters into three-year pilot project with recycle yard

Miriam Ostermann
Times Associate Editor

 

With ambitions to promote education, further Strathmore’s aspirations of an ecofriendly future, and funnel thousands of dollars back into the municipality’s pockets, the Town of Strathmore entered into a partnership with the local recycle yard to launch a three-year pilot project entailing the separation of organics, grass clippings, and garden waste from regular waste disposal.
H&H Huxted received approval from the town last week for a proposal to encourage the removal of yard scraps, grass clippings, and garden waste from solid waste, thus removing the unnecessary 300 tonnes of added weight to landfills in the summer months totalling $31,500.
“This to me is a no brainer,” said Councillor Bob Sobol, a representative on the sustainability committee. “It’s been something that I’ve been trying to work towards for years. I appreciate the household organics is a new thing. We weren’t able to do it because we had no place to compost this product, but now we do. Obviously the next step is to work on that, but the grass it just drives me crazy to see all that weight go in. This is dead weight and every bag costs our taxpayers money and there’s absolutely no reason for it.”
Last year, landfill tonnage of 2,709 signalled a significant drop of 163 tonnes from the previous year, despite an increase in population. As a response to the $17,115 savings in landfill costs, Strathmore’s disposal landfill fees also dropped in 2015. The town is following suit where other communities have already banned such materials from ending up in solid waste, with Calgary also imposing a ban this November.
Owner of H&H Huxted Enterprises, Colin Huxted, expects savings to reach more than $280,000 once the three-year pilot project nears its completion.
“The grass and leaves and the garden waste should not be going into the landfill, it’s a very valuable commodity as far as composting,” said Huxted.
“If it’s simple and easy people will do it. If it doesn’t cost them anything there’s no reason why they can’t do it. This year Huxted has many goals and we’re very excited to pursue those goals in hopes of Strathmore becoming the greenest town in Alberta. We feel education is the best way to achieve our goals and getting commitment from council will allow us to become even greener.”
Since taking ownership of the recycle yard in 2014, Huxted tackled cleanliness and safety issues, while passing numerous forward-thinking initiatives including the acquisition of a wood chipper, a metal baler, and a Class 1 compositing site – a goal achieved last July, after getting the green light from Alberta Environment and the Town of Strathmore, months ahead of the proposed timeline. Eight composting piles are currently cooking on the property at temperatures reaching up to 71 degrees Celsius. The finished organic material contains traces of iron, copper, manganese, zinc, and boron, ranks of high quality, and was used in fertilizing 200 lbs of vegetables that Huxted donated to Wheatland County Food Bank in October. The classification meant that food scraps and bio-solids could now be accepted at the facility. Since accepting bio solids in December, the town has already saved $18,000 by the end of February in trucking and composting fees. However, while the local council and Huxted understand the benefits and have already began reaping the rewards, education for residents remains a hurdle to be overcome.
“In my conversation with several people in the community, they’re excited about this too,” said Councillor Steve Grajczyk, who is also a representative on the sustainability committee.
“I haven’t heard any negatives to get this going. But at lot of them don’t understand, so there’s some education we have to do yet.”
H&H Huxted already receives numerous questions on their Facebook page, and estimated two-thirds of rarea esidents visit the recycling yard regularly. To further the push for composting, the organization envisions informational seminars on the property, more tours, and posted a short slideshow of before and after photos of the yard. Furthermore, Huxted plans to get involved with schools, and host their first Sustainability Corn Roast with the vegetables grown out of the organic materials. The hope is to promote the benefits of composting and the importance of preventing composting material from reaching the landfill.
When approaching the town at the regular council meeting on April 6, Huxted originally proposed a three-phase plan, where the first phase called for the removal of grass and garden waste from solid waste pickup. The options included composting in ones own backyard, bringing the materials to the recycle yard and not charge to be composted on the property, renting a grass and garden waste cart from Huxted to be picked up weekly for a fee, or hiring someone to haul the composting material to the recycle yard. Councillor Sobol also discussed a fifth option where every homeowner is supplied with a container for the grasses that would be picked up by Huxed and would result in additional costs to the town.
Phase 2 addresses household organics and the prohibition of being placed in regular garbage bags. The organics could be collected in kitchen catcher buckets, and then be placed in either 13 or 20 gallon carts. When compared to similar operations currently in existence, Phase 2 could save the town over $60,000 in landfill fees annually.
The third phase would be implemented after the completion of the three years, and initiate a fully automated system where resident have either a 64 gallon or 96-gallon cart. In the end, Huxted’s goal is to reduce each resident to one garbage bag by 2020.
“Everybody has to realize that yes as a taxpayer our goal is to reduce the amount of money that we’re spending moving all this stuff to a landfill but in the long run it’s a lot more than that,” said Sobol. “This is the only Earth we have and we have to look after it a little bit better than what we’re doing.”
In the near future, the recycle yard plans to involve students in a pumpkin growing competition, acquire a glass grinder, turn the property into a recycling park with trees, flowers and grass using the compost, and eventually construct an indoor recycling centre.
Council directed administration to draft a Sustainability policy. Furthermore, council unanimously approved the addition of an addendum to address the collection of grass and garden waste to the solid waste contract as a three-year pilot project beginning June 1, and for the collection of organics as a three-year pilot project beginning on Jan. 1, 2017, and that the addendum be brought back to council for approval. An option was also added to add an additional three years to the project once the initial three years have been completed. Councillor Rocky Blokland and Councillor Pat Fule were absent during the meeting.