Composters divert much household waste
Editor:
I read with great interest your thought provoking article in The Creemore Echo of Friday, March 21, 2025.
My wife and I also lived in Guelph before moving to our farm in Stayner 12 years ago. I recall their efforts to recycle organics and it was a bit of a disaster. The building they constructed didn’t work very well and they ended up sending their organic waste out of town.
We are strong believers in recycling, composting and protecting our 87-acre property. In fact, we live directly behind the Nottawasaga Landfill that you mention. We spent many years dealing with the waste that blew onto our property and it was primarily plastics – milk bags, grocery bags and styrofoam and other packaging. The situation changed when the new site supervisor understood the problem we had and she made many changes to alleviate most of the problems.
On our acreage we have two composters; one for household waste such as vegetable scraps and fruit scraps (we cook a lot) and we divert on average about 10 pounds of that material from the landfill per week. The other composter is for meat scraps, including bones, fat and anything that won’t readily degrade in the soil composter.
Both composters are very effective.
Our blue bin is usually very full by pick-up day, yet our garbage bin is only half full.
We think we are doing a great job in looking after our garbage.
We have never used our green bin and don’t intend to in the future. We should not be penalized for the actions of those who do not care about the environment. As an aside, we don’t use fast food or pizza boxes and at odd times, like most rural landowners, we use our burn barrel when necessary. For the few minutes it takes to dispose of a couple of things, it is a far better solution than putting them in the landfill.
If our garbage bin were not picked up because the green bin is not there, it would be a big problem. If that were to become a rule, all that would happen is that people would start to dump their trash along the county roads. I spend a couple of days every spring cleaning our ditches along County Road 7. The people that toss their garbage out their car windows are likely the ones who don’t care to sort their garbage in their household.
Thanks again, for bringing light to this issue,
Geoff Allen,
Stayner.
