If you notice someone flipping up the lid of your organics cart in the next few days, don't be alarmed. 

It's likely just auditors with Airdrie Waste and Recycling looking at the cart's placement and any visible sign of contamination during the city's organics audit.  Waste division assistants will be doing the audit over the next week to ten days.

"Our goal is obviously to beat the organics truck so they're out there fairly early looking in the carts to look for any sign of contamination and really using it as an opportunity to leave notes behind for residents and encouraging them to call us so we can have those conversations," explains Waste and Recycling Team Lead Susan Grimm.

Grimm says the first thing she wants to stress is that green carts are not for garbage.  "There is evidence through our assessment that some residents might not know this because we're seeing full black garbage bags being placed inside those green bins.  Airdrie's waste collection is manual and you're only permitted one bag of waste per week that you can place in a can that's no larger than 120 litres if you wanted to purchase that.  First and foremost, please don't use your green carts as a garbage can."

The worst offenders when it comes to contaminants are plastics.  "Plastic bags is a big one, says Grimm.  "They can be with or without something in them.  Food packaging plastics, so we've seen full ice cream pails, we've seen clamshell plastics that contain fruits and vegetables, we've seen old cucumbers still wrapped in the cellophane, those types of things. Non-compostable pet waste bags are a big thing too.  The pet waste can go in there but it either needs to be loose or in a compostable bag."

Grimm explains that the problem with plastic is it doesn't break down, whether it's in the landfill or compost pile.  If the plastic is shredded and screened through the compost material it leaves tiny particles which then get into the soil which then is used to grow food and the cycle starts all over again.  

"If full loads are contaminated they could end up going directly to the landfill and organic material that's in those loads, when they're buried, releases methane gas, which is dangerous, as well as leachate which we call a "garbage juice" that can get into the ground.  It's really important from an environmental standpoint that we're not putting that material in the landfill."

Grimm says it comes down to saving the environment along with saving the city and its residents some dollars and cents.  "Right now it costs us less to process organics versus what it costs us to send material to the landfill.  But if there's too much contamination, these loads are either going to the landfill in their entirety and being charged at the higher rate or we're paying for it to be processed at the organics facility, and then we're paying again for the organics material that's screened to go to the landfill.  We don't want to be paying twice and we just want to have clean organic products put in our green carts."

The savings that can be realized by performing the organics audit and educating residents on what should go where are far greater than than the cost of having a few staff for the few hours the audit will take to identify education opportunities in an effort to minimize organics contamination.

Grimm says the results of audits on all three streams, organics, waste, and recycling will be presented to city council during the first quarter.  

You can find out what things should go into your green, blue and black carts HERE.

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