People living in multi-residential buildings to start sorting organic waste by next year

In the next two years all high rise units in Waterloo region will be required to separate their organic waste.

The provincially mandated policyrequires all municipalities to reduce the amount of waste that heads to a landfill site and while residential units have regular collection of green bins and blue boxes, it's a different story for multi-residential units.

The Ministry of Environment Conservation and Parks (MECP) issued a policy statement in 2018 that directs "public and private sectors to prevent, reduce and divert food and organic waste."

"The Policy Statement sets targets for medium to large municipalities, and larger businesses and institutions to reduce and divert up to 50 to 70 per cent of their food and organic waste by 2023 to 2025," said an email statement from MECP.

"With regards to multi-residential buildings, the policy statement directs owners of multi-residential buildings to reduce and divert 50 per cent of their food and organic waste by 2025; this will apply to multi-residential buildings with sixor more units in municipalities with populations of 5,000 or greater."

Currently, newer high rise apartments offer organic waste collection through private companies, but older ones don't. The Region of Waterloo only provides waste management services to multi-residential sites with less than six units.

Major cost to expand organic collection

The region reviewed its multi-residential waste services in 2021 with the goal of directing waste from the landfill site and improving recycling and organic waste.

A 2021 report offered a preliminary cost estimate to expand to organics and garbage collection to be in the range of $3M to $5.2M per year.

Dave Johnstone is the Manager of Waste Collection and Diversion with the Region of Waterloo and says with the growing number of high rise buildings in the region, the time for diverting organic waste has come.

"At this time, our multi-residential service levels remain status quo," said Johnstone.

"In accordance with the report, any further service level review [and] changes will be done based on monitoring [and] outcomes of provincial policy direction related to the Provincial Food and Organic's Framework. As well as the transition of the blue box program to full producer responsibility."

Johnstone says multi residential developers will have to search for companies who provide the service to collect organic waste, and he says fortunately there are many local businesses that provide the service.

The report of multi-residential waste services in the Region of Waterloo found:

• 8,200 units (buildings having up to six units, and townhouse complexes that meet truck-access criteria) receive the same level of curbside collection service as single-family homes (blue box, green bin, garbage, bulky item, and seasonal yard waste and Christmas trees).
• 41,000 units receive recycling services only, using larger capacity (360 litre) carts.
• 52,500 units receive a garbage rebate, distributed every year for those properties not eligible for region garbage collection (approximately $1.9 million annually).