January 30, General. Green carts will roll across the Durham region of Greater Toronto when Miller Waste Systems completes its Ebara in-vessel composting facility by summer in Pickering, Ontario. Homeowners will have blue box recyclables and organics collected weekly. Garbage β in clear bags to help monitor source separation β will be collected every other week. Miller Waste Systems predicts that with compostable bags or paper bags to line kitchen containers and a totally organic feedstock from strictly household organics and yard trimmings, a quality compost will be generated.
The green carts were supplied by Norseman. Fremont is one of 13 jurisdictions in Alameda County that is offering curbside collection of source separated food residuals and soiled paper with the existing green waste program. As part of the food scrap grant from Stopwaste. Results from the monitoring showed an average of 25 percent participation in the food scrap program from Fremont residents who set out green carts on the day of the audit.
This level of participation is consistent with the majority of the food scrap program participation levels experienced in other Alameda County Cities. It was also observed that food scrap participation increased slightly during the spring and summer months when yard waste volumes increased. In addition to the quarterly monitoring, the COF ESD established an estimate of the quantity of organics diverted from the landfill.
Prior to implementing the new organics program, a baseline tonnage for residential yard waste and garbage was determined. According to the data, collection of residential organics had increased approximately 7. Although the increase in collection of organics is promising, the decrease in residential garbage collected could not be attributed to the addition of food scraps and food-soiled paper alone; an increase in recyclables collected due to introducing the single-stream system had also contributed significantly to diverting tons from the landfill an almost 20 percent increase over the past year.
In terms of lessons learned, Virostko points out that since Fremont was not the first city in Alameda County to introduce a food scrap program, COF ESD staff were able to conduct a phone survey of other jurisdictions, asking various questions about their experiences with food scraps and single-stream recycling as well. One valuable piece of advice was to roll out the food scrap program to all single-family residents at once instead of conducting a pilot program or a phased approach β especially since it was rolled out in conjunction with the single-stream recycling program rollout.
