Regina residents will soon add a green bin next to their brown and blue ones for food & yard waste.
Curbside food and yard waste bins are rolling out this summer with the city-wide service saving landfill space and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The material collected will be processed to create a usable product.
The green bins will be rolled out to residents in August, with every resident receiving a 240-litre green cart, with collection starting in September.
All food scraps, including meat, bones, dairy and greases, yard waste, soiled paper (paper towel, cardboard and tissues) and BPI-certified compostable bags can go into the green cart, which will divert roughly 50 per cent of the waste that is currently going into the garbage in Regina.
Janet Aird, the manager of program development and delivery of water, water and environment with the City of Regina, said that the rollout comes after a successful pilot program.
“Overall, the pilot feedback that we received was positive,” she stated. “Changes that we made to the permanent city-wide service, because of the pilot, is we are allowing the BPI-certified compostable bags as well as the changing the frequency of the collection of the green bins over the winter to bi-weekly.”
She said that as the City of Regina aims to be net zero by 2050, the rollout of green bins is a part of the plan.
“It saves 24,000 to 30,000 tonnes of waste joining to the landfill, and I believe it’s 10,800 of greenhouse gas emissions annually, so it makes a big impact on the greenhouse gas emission perspective and from diverting waster from the landfill.”
Green bins will be collected weekly between April and October and biweekly between November and March; garbage will be collected biweekly year-round.
“You have your recycling collection on Monday and your garbage collection on Thursday right now,” Aird used as an example. “Their recycling would stay on Monday, their garbage collection is switched to the opposition Monday as they are bi-weekly, and your green cart is going to on your garbage day.”
In the coming months, Aird said the City will be in the community to provide more information about the rollout.
“We are right now doing some slow outreach, we are doing public education boots throughout the city, so we will be a farmer’s market and different events, and then starting in June, there will be a more complete media campaign.”
