Bue bins could serve as dual role in new recycling plan

Lac La Biche County is taking steps to go green once the white stuff leaves with the implementation of a leaf and yard waste recycling pilot program.
At a county public works committee meeting last Monday, municipal staff presented the committee with the program, designed to reduce the volume of waste disposed of by residents. Leaves and yard waste would be collected separately from other garbage and recycling to be composted and re-purposed instead of going to a landfill. This would eliminate a significant amount of waste going to landfills, as approximately 30 per cent of waste generated by County residents was organic material.

The county’ s manager of environmental services Tom Kinderwater presented the committee with three options for conducting the program. The first option was for communal bins where residents would throw their yard waste in, the second was to re-purpose pre-existing blue recycling receptacle for unbagged yard waste. The final option was for manual, curbside pick up of yard waste that residents would be required to put in compostable bags.
Councillor Hajar Haymour addressed the problem of transporting large bags of yard waste to communal bins if option one was taken.
“I don’ t have a truck, I have a car,” he said. “To have two or three bags of waste and haul them to a different place, I should buy an old car to do it?”
Councillor Robert Richard believed as long as the option they chose was convenient to residents, there was likelihood for success.
“If you make something convenient people will use it, if you don’ t make it convenient, they won’ t,” he said.
Kinderwater stressed one of the most important things about the program was moving away from the use of plastic bags, so yard waste can easily be separated from other garbage to be re-purposed as compost.
“The future is to not bag any of this,” he said. “The idea is to put it back on properties for the water and the value of the nutrients.”

But councillors pointed out throwing yard waste in bins without bags would likely cause a foul odor as any remaining material decomposed. In the interests of reusing current county resources, County Mayor Omer Moghrabi said all the stink wasn’ t enough to trash the whole idea.
“I would like to use our bins as we have them with no bags,” he said. “And if it gets a little stinky...wash it out.”
The committee officially decided to go with a slightly modified version of the option to re-purpose existing blue bins, agreeing that as a pilot project, it would be all about seeing what works. Pre-existing blue recycling receptacles would also be used for disposing of unbagged yard waste, which would be emptied on a specific yard waste day. Once emptied of yard waste, residents would resume using the bin for recycling.

The pilot program would only be run in urban areas as administration said rural residents already deal with their own yard waste. Kinderwater acknowledged residents would need to be educated on the program that still needs further planning.
“I think as a pilot program we don’ t need to be afraid to fail,” said Richard. “Let’ s try it and see if it works.”
A motion by councillor Haymour was passed for the committee to endorse the program. The decision will receive official council endorsement at the next council meeting.
Councillor Tim Thompson was the only committee member against the motion, preferring the communal bins option instead.
[email protected]