City rolling out green bin program next month
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 21, 2023.
Ry Clarke
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The City of Lethbridge will be fully rolling out its curbside organics program beginning in May. Residents living in houses and semi-detached houses within the city will be receiving their green bins in April.
The first phase of the program launched in April last year in select areas of the city. Now the program will expand as the City looks to minimize the waste residents are tossing out. Green carts will start rolling out in April but will not be completed until May.
“There will be no change to existing black and blue cart collection – the schedules that people currently have for those two existing streams will not change. For the green cart, we are planning on doing collection on a different day. Operationally, it is one of those things where putting one cart out can be tricky in terms of making sure it is placed out correctly. Adding a second cart on the same day was deemed to be too much in terms of logistics and tighter neighbourhoods,” said James Nicholls, Waste and Recycling Operations Manager for the city.
Nicholls notes the green bins will be delivered with a kitchen pail and a user guide explaining what the collection schedule looks and the dos and don’ts of what goes in the bin. Residents can also go online at curbside.lethbridge.ca/your-green-cart. The Lethbridge Loop app, found in the Apple and Microsoft app store, can be downloaded to help with a timely notification just before collection.
“You don’t have to do that check where you look down the street or lane and see who’s put out black or blue,” said Nicolls.
“It also gives you access to our waste wizard, which is a useful tool for understanding what can and cannot go into the green cart.”
Nicholls said “there is a wide range of material that can go into the green cart. Not only is it for your yard waste, like grass clippings, leaves, those items. It is also for those food waste items, potato peelings, expired vegetables.
“In addition to that, you also have things like meat and bones. A lot of folks have backyard composters – you can’t put those items in a backyard composter but they can go into a green cart. Other items such as soiled pizza boxes, things that you grumble ‘I wish I could put this in the blue cart.’ Well instead of throwing that away, anything that is soiled can go into the green cart. Same thing goes for paper towels that you use to wipe up a spill on the counter. It has a wide range of materials that can go in, and that is where that waste-wizard can help out a ton.”
To help make the transition easy for residents, the City of Lethbridge is releasing eight episodes on its YouTube channel called “Curbside Enthusiasm.”
The series will share tips and tricks to ease concerns about the new green cart, with the first episode talking about odours. “Education and outreach are absolutely crucial,” said Nicholls. “These friendly videos have been put together by our corporate communications team, and are meant to get ahead of those concerns and say ‘Here are some ways that the City has thought about those issues.’ Trying to find ways to alleviate those issues.”
The City is reminding residents that the $5-per-month charge to their utility bill will start after collections begin for the month of May.
“We are hoping that with the application of a green cart program, we are going to have an opportunity to provide people a way to reduce the size of that large cart, saving the city, and residents, money because the cost of disposing of garbage is far higher than the cost of working with organic material, something that can be brought back into the economy and used for a wide variety of purposes,” said Nicholls.
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15-14
If we punt this Nicholls guy from city hall, we’d all be $60 per year richer. Does he have a cozy arrangement with the bin manufacturers? The taxpayer certainly didn’t want this additional plastic bucket.
What they do not tell you is that the actual cost of this program is $3,800.000.00 for collection cost,$1.80 every time the auto ARM goes up and down for less than 3,900 tonnes of organics total cost $ 17 million, think at $135.00 tonne to put in a landfill. The City Council gave the ICI Business sector over eight years of dumping organics in a special landfill cell #7 over 20,000 tonnes a year, now they will tip into the Residential Organic facility $ 10 million, $5milliion in operating costs, and you will also pay with $1.5 million in tipping fees. You are mandatory the ICI is voluntary, You have mandatory diversion targets of 50%, and ICI had no target now 25%. This is City Council’s brilliant plan aided by the three enviro groups should have their heads examined.
There are over 11,000 backyard composters and 35% of households have in-sink garburators all City approved non-mandatory. I will not have a green bin on my property. like the others we take care of our organics and food waste, we use the yard waste depots for over 25 years. if citizens are filling a green cart they should pay the price