On October 15th, the City of Winnipeg opened 15 locations for residents to drop off their food waste. This was touted by city officials as a significant step in fighting climate change, stating that for each tonne of food waste diverted, two tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided.
Compost Winnipeg!!
This program is in partnership with Compost Winnipeg, a social enterprise of the Green Action Centre. A huge shout out to both GAC and Compost Winnipeg for being leaders for environmental responsibility and working to make Winnipeg a more sustainable place. They have stepped in where the City hasn’t to provide a way for people to easily divert food waste from our landfills. Not only does this reduce GHG emissions, but it takes something that was “garbage” and turns it into something that helps grow food! For gardeners, compost is the magic ingredient!
WTF CoW??
Okay, back to the press release and what the City of Winnipeg (CoW) is proposing. First off, the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. has estimated how much CO2e is emitted by food waste. It isn’t two tonnes for each tonne of waste, it is 0.838 tonnes. “For every 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) of food waste landfilled, an estimated 34 metric tons of fugitive methane emissions (838 mmt CO2e) are released.” This is also the figure that Compost Winnipeg uses in their calculations of the impact of food waste in landfills. So, the Mayor’s estimate of the GHG reduction is more than double what it actually is.
While I appreciate that this offering of 15 depots is an interim measure until city-wide green cart collection is in place, you have to wonder and question how much of an impact this is actually going to have. For all the positive spin being placed on this decision, and again bravo to Compost Winnipeg for being willing to undertake this project, you have to question the real impact of this. How many people are going to collect their food waste and then take it to one of the 15 drop off locations? If you don’t own a car, are you going to carry your garbage on the bus? How effective are the drop off locations already for organic waste diversion?
Waste Diversion in Winnipeg
Luckily, we have the data on the waste stream in Winnipeg, and how much waste gets landfilled and diverted each year. To be blunt, it ain’t great. I have gone through the data from the City from 2007 to 2023 so you don’t have to. Everything is available on the city website in their “Tonnage Reports”.
The file below is the collated information from those tonnage reports from each year. What it shows is that while the city has grown over the past 17 years, the total amount of waste has remained essentially flat. But, on a per capita basis, where in 2007 Winnipeg produced 864.2Kg of waste per person, by 2022 that was down to 683Kg per person. (I am not comparing 2023 numbers, as there is a significant drop in all tonnages for that year that I just can’t explain). Residents have reduced their waste by 19% .
So Much For The Good News
Digging into the data starts to show a few more details beyond the success of people having reduced their overall waste by 19%. Beyond that global stat for the overall waste production in Winnipeg, there isn’t much good news. In 2007, total diversion rates, for recycling and composting was 17%, in 2023 that has increase to about 30%. That is a far cry from where we need to get to.
Diverting Organics
Let’s get back to organics and composting. This is, after all, the Brave New World that the City of Winnipeg wants to take us to! (I really wish there was a sarcasm font).
There is absolutely nothing new whatsoever about composting organics; diverting yard and food waste from landfills. Municipalities big and small have been doing it for decades. The City of Halifax was the first city in Canada to have curbside pick up for organics, starting in 1998! (Winnipeg’s proposal is to start their curbside pick up in 2030, 42 years after Halifax!). In fact, most municipalities, big and small, do this very basic thing.
Statistics Canada found that in 2021 82% of Canadians compost their yard and/or kitchen waste. Of those, almost 80% of them used curbside pickup!
Depots, really?
The City of Winnipeg is setting up “depots” as a means for residents to compost their food waste ahead of the full composting program being implemented, in another 6 years. Looking at the data from StatsCan, we see that only 2% of people who diverted their kitchen waste used a depot. Depot use is much more common for yard waste, all those leaves and grass clippings we collect, where 9% of people use a depot for yard waste.
The City of Winnipeg Tonnage Reports give us a good breakdown on what residents do and how they use the various options. Over the past 10 years, an average of 7,750 tonnes/yr of yard waste has been dropped off at depots, compared to an average 31,800 tonnes/yr collected at curbside. If we use the StatsCan average of people using depots for kitchen waste compared to yard waste, 2% vs 9%, that means that we should anticipate around 1,700 tonnes of kitchen waste to be collected at the depots each year. Even taking the generous GHG estimate put forward by the Mayor, that come out to 3,400 tonnes of GHG’s avoided. The more accepted GHG capture rate indicates a reduction of 1,425 tonnes per year.
Why does this matter?
Okay, lots of wonky numbers and data. So what? Why does this really matter anyway? Well, yard and food waste in the landfills is a major source of greenhouse gasses. After transportation and buildings, landfills are often the next largest GHG emitters in municipalities. Cities have been working for a long time on trying to capture “fugitive methane” emissions from their landfills. They dig wells to capture the gas, and either find a way to use it or simply flare it. In 2013, the City of Winnipeg launched their “Brady Road Landfill Methane Gas Project”, where they spent $4.5M to capture and flare methane gas from that one landfill. Not only is yard and food waste contributing to climate change, but it’s costing a lot to try and mitigate it.
While the City of Winnipeg continues to accumulate the GHG liability of methane from its landfills, while it spends millions of dollars trying to mitigate the methane, mostly by flaring it (which still emits GHGs!), it has done very little to significantly address reducing organics from the waste stream.
The Slow Crawl
In 2019, Council launched a pilot to study kitchen waste collection. It was a two-year pilot that ended in 2022. The results were significant. Public acceptance was high, participation rate was high, the compost “product” produced was high quality, and the potential was very good! It was estimated that about 50% of current residential waste could be diverted with a kitchen waste collection program, which pretty much matches the StatsCan estimates!
Out of this, City Council decided in the fall of 2023, 16 months after receiving the above report, to move forward with curbside green bin, but only for single-family residences. Not only did it take 16 months to decide, the project they approved will be implemented in 2030. That’s 11 years after approving the Pilot Project!
2030 is also the year we are supposed to have reduced our GHG emissions by 50%!
Let’s Get Serious
The City of Winnipeg and City Council need to get serious about climate change. Everything about the announcement of the “kitchen waste depots” illustrates they do not take climate change seriously. From the over-estimate of the impact by more than double, to the length of time for implementation of a “full-scale” green bin program, they are not serious.
This is not a going to be a “full-scale” green program if it only targets single-family residences. Winnipeg has over 300,000 residential buildings. Of those, 57% are single family detached, 4% are semi-detached, and another 4% are row houses. That means that 35% of the residential buildings are NOT included in the composting program, over 100,000 residential buildings, such as apartment buildings. They are not serious about climate change.
This is So Easy!
There is nothing new about setting up composting programs. Small towns have been doing it for years, big cities have been doing it for years, Halifax has been doing it for almost 4 decades. It doesn’t involve huge technology, composting is one of the most basic natural processes. There is no wheel here to be invented. There is no distinct “made in Winnipeg” solution required.
Why Must They Make It So Hard?
WTF, CoW, get Serious!
Brian