Wasted opportunity
Why are Simcoe County residents not embracing the green bin?
It’s baffling to learn that, despite efforts by county officials to educate people about the benefits of using the green bin to collect organics, those items are still being thrown in the trash bin.
A study found that 46.4 per cent of household waste collected by the county could have been diverted.
Having lived in Guelph during a wet-dry waste collection pilot project, I was pretty excited when the County of Simcoe rolled out the green bins in 2008. If I recall properly, Guelph’s wet-dry collection method at the time required residents to place all dry garbage in one receptacle and all food waste, used tissues, hygiene products etc… in another. That system has evolved to include a blue bin for recyclables similar to Simcoe’s.
Having been a keen member of the composting club in high school, I knew the benefits of separating valuable organics from other waste in order to make rich soil which would then be used to grow new food. Behold the magic of nature.
I suspect that many people in rural areas have a backyard composter or just a pile on which grass clippings and kitchen scraps are dumped. This eventually becomes brown gold!
So the question is, why aren’t Simcoe County residents using their green bins? Is it laziness, is it lack of awareness, or is the system just not working for people? We’d love to know.
A trip to the landfill site in Stayner will confirm that waste management has evolved. That smelly dump is a thing of the past. Waste is now carefully sorted and managed.
When trapped in a landfill, organic waste produces methane gas, and it also takes up valuable space in the near-capacity facilities.
The Stayner site is slated to close by the end of this year, when it reaches capacity. The only other remaining landfill in the county, the Oro-Medonte site, is expected to close by 2027.
Since rolling out the green bins, residents have failed to use them effectively. County council has been reluctant to use heavy handed incentives to get people to sort their waste but it appears that is what’s needed. When people are forced to pay for extra bags of garbage, they tend to comply with sorting. We have proven it is the only way.
Looking back it would have been a good strategy to provide a smaller black bin for garbage, or charge people per weight knowing that all the heavy waste can usually be sorted into the green and blue bins.
We’d love to know what the barriers are to using the green bin. Send your thoughts to editor@creemore. com.
