City of Saskatoon says compost, cardboard boxes filling up landfill

Brenda Wallace wants to turn a mountain of garbage into a molehill.

The City of Saskatoon's Director of Environmental and Corporate Initiatives is getting ready to release a new report on how the city can divert more garbage from the city's landfill.

According to her, two-thirds of the city's garbage that ends up in the landfill is coming from local businesses and institutions.

"Within that, 22 per cent of it could be recycled in the same way that we have our household recycling bins at home," Wallace told CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning. "32,000 tons could be diverted from the landfill."

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Businesses aren't the only ones contributing to the landfill problem. According to the report, almost 60 per cent of household garbage is organic, meaning it could be composted.

While the city does have an optional yearlong green bin program that takes food waste, it is currently limited to 8,000 households. However, that program could ultimately expand to all households in the city.

"We're in the same phase with our composting as we were five or six years ago with our curbside recycling," she said. "It was very costly for collection, and it was also costly for processing."

Meanwhile, the city is currently studying bringing a paper and cardboard ban at the landfill for local businesses. Administration plans to meet with businesses about a ban like that sometime this year.

"Businesses are contributing through their property taxes to waste services, even though they aren't receiving nearly the broad range of waste services that a resident from the city is," she said. "They're subsidizing that service, so there's a bit of a fairness issue."

The city has set a goal of diverting 70 per cent of the city's garbage out of the landfill. If the landfill becomes completely full, it could become an expensive problem. Closing and decommissioning the landfill alone would cost $26 million.

Wallace will present the report to the city's Environmental Advisory Committee on Thursday.