According to Airdrie Waste and Recycling's Team Lead Susan Grimm, most Airdrie residents are doing a good job of recycling.  

Tomorrow (September 26) though, she hopes that two workshops the city will hold will show you how you can do better.  The Waste and Recycling department will host two workshops that will go in the Rotary Room in Genesis Place with one starting at 12:00 pm and the second at 5:30 pm.

"These workshops are going to give us just one more avenue to be able to provide outreach to the residents," says Grimm, "Throughout the year we attend community events like the Farmer's Market and AirdrieFEST.  We do school tours and presentations and it's just one more opportunity for us to provide the opportunity to residents to ask real-time questions."

Grimm says that through their summer Cart Wizard program and recent Waste Audit the city has conducted, they've noticed some common themes.  "Things like, what actually goes where what types of plastics can be recycled, what should be put in the garbage, crinkly versus stretchy plastic, stuff like that."

Grimm explains that contamination in any of the waste or recycling streams means extra work by the collectors and processors and, in the end, contaminated material gets sent to the landfill, which causes a cost on a cost.  However, the additional work or cost isn't the city's biggest concern.  

"Some of the contaminants can even be dangerous or hazardous to the people at the processing facilities.  Things like hazardous waste, propane tanks, aerosol cans, those kinds of things." 

According to Grimm, the results of the Cart Wizard program and the Residential Waste Audit will be taken to Airdrie City Council in November.  She explains what they show will be revealed then but she already knows how much Airdrie has recycled this year, and that shows the city has really embraced the program.

"We've recycled about 1,500 metric tons of blue cart material and 4,300 metric tons of green cart material since January 1st."

Grimm says, right now,  the city is focusing much of its efforts on educating people about recycling with the end goal being to reduce the amount of waste sent to the landfill.   Their five-year Waste Plan, however, is looking to expand to more recycling for multi-family residences and, possibly, the business community.

"We're looking at mandatory organics recycling for multi-family, we already have mandatory blue box.  We're definitely looking to expand the programs to include multi-family and, potentially, the business community as well."

Anyone who attends one of the tomorrow's workshops will be entered to win a free month of collection from the City of Airdrie.  The workshops are free of charge. 

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