Kenora council to vote on home composting pilot project

Composting in the City of Kenora may be about to get much faster, and much more convenient.

Kenora councillors are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to partner with Food Cycle Science on a 12-week pilot project, that would see the municipality purchase 250 FoodCyclers at a reduced price, and sell them to residents at a subsidized rate.

The FoodCyclers are countertop appliances, which break down food waste into compost in a matter of hours.

"You could go from a bunch of organic waste into this kind of dry, odourless soil amendment," said Kylie Hissa, Kenora's strategic initiatives officer. "There's no mess and no real odour."

"It all kind of alleviates a lot of the concerns that people might have with backyard composting," she said. "The time commitment, and the location, and pests and animals and everything like that."

Residents selected to be part of the pilot project would be asked to track how much they're using the FoodCycler, and how much compost is being created.

"That information would be then sent to Food Cycle Science Corporation for their own uses on how to better their products and services," Hissa said, adding personal and private information would not be included in what's sent to the company. "The data can also be used [by] the municipality in order to inform future grant applications."

Beyond that, she said, there are a number of options in terms of how the pilot project could be of benefit to Kenora going forward, including possibly purchasing more FoodCyclers to expand their use in the municipality.

"It seems like we could then transition into a larger scale project with [Food Cycle Science], or we would have access to that data and pursue funding through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for a pilot project or a feasibility type of project with them," Hissa said. "So, we're not quite sure, exactly, where this is going to go, but it is pretty timely, considering the City of Kenora is also undergoing a sustainability action plan."

"And with some of the community engagement that we've done so far, composting has been brought up numerous times," she said. "So it seems as though from a community standpoint, composting is really important to many of our residents."

If approved by council, Hissa said, the project could begin in November. Council on Tuesday will vote on whether to allocate $66,500 plus HST to the project; however, since the units would be sold back to residents at a subsidized price, the net cost to the municipality would be about $32,700 plus HST, Hissa said.