It will be difficult to convince people of the merits of separating out kitchen scraps if those scraps end up in the landfill with the rest of the garbage. The Capital Regional District board should make sure that doesn鈥檛 happen.
CRD staff had recommended approval of a contract with Emterra Environmental to haul and process food scraps on the Lower Mainland. The $4.79-million contract would be in force from April 2014 to December 2015.
The CRD鈥檚 environmental services committee voted Wednesday against recommending the contract with Emterra. If the board follows the committee鈥檚 direction, that would leave the region with no choice but to dump the kitchen waste in the Hartland landfill.
And that would be a waste of a good effort on the part of Greater Victoria residents who have diligently embraced the plan to compost kitchen scraps, turning them into something useful instead of filling the landfill.
The CRD鈥檚 original plan was to ban kitchen scraps from the landfill as of 2015, thereby adding years to the life of the facility. That meant changing the way garbage is collected. Municipalities spent millions on trucks and collection bins, and residents, already used to sorting out recyclables such as paper and plastic, began putting food scraps into separate bins.
Many people have compost bins in their yards, but waste such as dairy and meat products aren鈥檛 suitable for backyard composting. Yet those materials can become valuable soil nutrients, and it makes perfect sense to regard them as resources worth recycling.
The first part of the plan worked well. In the city of Victoria, the amount of waste going to the landfill dropped by 37 per cent in the first three months of the program. About 6.5 tonnes of refuse a day was being kept out of the landfill and sent for composting.
But the composting part didn鈥檛 work as planned. Foundation Organics in Central Saanich was taking some of the scraps, but the operation generated constant complaints from neighbours about the smell. For some, the odour problem was affecting health and making life intolerable. As a result, the CRD suspended its contract with Foundation Organics and then its recycling licence.
That left the CRD with the problem of what to do with the scraps. It began sending waste to Fisher Road Recycling in Cobble Hill, but Saanich has signed a five-year contract with Fisher Road, which doesn鈥檛 have the capacity to handle the CRD鈥檚 kitchen waste, as well.
Shipping the waste out of the region is a stopgap measure while a better solution is sought. Sending the waste to the Lower Mainland isn鈥檛 a good idea, but landfilling the scraps is worse. What incentive is there to sort your household garbage if it all ends up in the same place?
Composting kitchen waste is a good plan gone awry. The CRD put all its eggs in the Foundation Organics basket without first ensuring the facility could process the material properly and handle the necessary volume.
As the board ponders the next step 鈥� a composting facility at the Hartland site is worth considering 鈥� it should stay true to the goal of keeping kitchen scraps out of the landfill.
If Hartland fills up, there鈥檚 nowhere else to go. Finding a site for a new landfill on Vancouver Island would be difficult, if not impossible.
Meanwhile, let鈥檚 not overlook the obvious. A significant amount of the kitchen waste we produce is unnecessary. The environment, our budgets and our health would benefit if we were more judicious in buying, preparing and consuming food.
The less waste we produce, the less we have to worry about how to dispose of it.
