A Waste and Recycling Audit that was conducted in August 2018 shows that Airdrie still has things to learn when it comes to what we're putting into the landfill.  

The audit results were presented to Airdrie City Council at their meeting this week.  Waste and Recycling Team Lead Susan Grimm says the audit looked at all three streams of curbside waste, organics, and recycling.  While the results didn't show anything they weren't expecting to see, it was rather disappointing when it came to our garbage.  But first, let's start with the good news, starting with the organics green cart program.  

Grimm says, "Overall with our organics and recycling program, we're faring quite well.  Our organics program, overall we're seeing residents really understanding what should be in the green carts and the contamination rates are pretty low at two percent."

Grimm then moves on to the recycling program where she says Airdrie is doing okay, but...."Specific to what can go in there and how the contents should be prepared, there's still a little bit of work to do there and we're sitting at about a 19 percent contamination rate, so not horrible, but definitely some room for improvement."

And now, the bad news and what Grimm calls Airdrie's biggest challenge is the amount of work that is still needed when it comes to waste.

"When we looked at the audit, only 46 percent of what is in our garbage is actually garbage and the remainder should be diverted to one of our other programs whether it's the organics, recycling or the recycle depot."

According to Grimm, Airdrie is now facing the need to get the 54 percent of materials that could be put into other collection streams out of the garbage, and eventually the landfill, and where they belong.

"The biggest bang for our buck is going to mean using our green carts all year round for all of our organics, not just our leaf and yard waste.  34 percent of that 54 percent is organic material.  That's the biggest impact.  We need to get people using those green carts."

Even though the Waste and Recycling Department has been working hard to educate Airdronians what goes into each of the carts, Grimm feels more is needed.

"I think not just Airdrie but when you're working with these programs in any city, the key is education.  We've heard a lot of feedback from the residents in putting together things like a Facebook Live initiative and even YouTubes with how to.  We conducted a couple of information sessions just after our CartWizard program ended and those that did attend said it was fantastic information.  I think we need to just figure out how do we get to the people and what's going to be our best medium."

Grimm says the only disappointing part to the audit, in her eyes, was the fact that in three audits done over 17 months the results didn't change that much and the city would have liked to have seen that.   Grimm says, "That's going to be our goal going forward is to change some of those percentages. While it's great to see the garbage going down at the curb, there's still lots of room for improvement.  If we put the stuff in the right place, we're going to see those numbers drop all along the board."

Airdrie plans to do an annual Waste and Recycling Audit as it will be the tool to help track their progress and focus their education efforts.  

Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Email us at news@discoverairdrie.com