New drop-off sites across Winnipeg help reduce landfill waste
By: Skye Anderson
Just six days after launching food waste drop-off stations across the city, Compost Winnipeg collected 1,238 kg of food waste that would otherwise go to the landfill.
“I think of composting as a land acknowledgment in everyday action,” said Karrie Blackburn, sales and customer services lead of Compost Winnipeg.
The City of Winnipeg, partnered with Compost Winnipeg, has created 15 food waste drop-off stations across the city.
Compost Winnipeg’s website has an interactive map showing where each of the 15 stations is located.
Blackburn says people can collect their food waste either in a kitchen bin, freezer, or outside until they are ready to drop it off.
Compost Winnipeg transfers the collected waste to Prairie Green Landfill, where they break it down using a windrow-style composting method, a method used when breaking down large amounts of waste.
The waste is organized into rows of piles and then aerated periodically, either manually or mechanically, by turning the piles.
The large pile size produces more heat, and the high temperature breaks down the organic waste faster. This allowed the Compost Winnipeg to accept items that are usually more difficult to break down, such as dairy and chicken bones.
Household food waste, predominantly organic, makes up approximately 44 per cent of Winnipeg’s waste stream, according to the Winnipeg Food Council’s Food System Snapshot in 2022.
“If it was once alive, we can take it,” said Blackburn. “Same goes for paper or even pizza boxes.”
When organic waste sits in landfills, it produces methane – a powerful greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. In 2022, Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory said 17 per cent of national methane emissions came from Canadian landfills.
“The students are the kitchen managers and chefs of tomorrow,” said College Environmental Initiatives Coordinator, Geoff Heath. “So I hope that one day if they are working and see composting is not being done, maybe they will speak up and try to make a change.”
Heath says that as the home of RRC Polytech’s culinary programs, Paterson GlobalFoods Institute believes it is important to teach students the importance of limiting food waste and composting.
He says the Culinary Exchange, a public food court in the PGI building that sells food prepared by students, offers pre- and post-consumer compost methods.
At the end of each week, unsold food items are donated to the Main Street Project and Siloam Mission.
The food court has compost bins for guests to put their leftover food, along with the takeout containers from the Culinary Exchange.
Students who live in the 100-room residence have the option to keep a compost bin in their rooms, and the college provides a bin in each shared kitchen. Compost Winnipeg collects the waste from the college.
Heath hopes eventually the college will find a way to include paper towels into the compost program, as they are a large source of unnecessary waste.
Both Heath and Blackburn say they often receive non-compostable items in their bins, such as plastic and coffee cups.
People can find a list of dos and don’ts on Compost Winnipeg’s website for those who are unsure about what can and can’t be composted.
Blackburn says everybody should try composting for just a week and see how easy it really is to make a difference.
