The City of Saskatoon is looking for feedback on a city-wide organics program.
Administration was recently given the green light by city council to explore options for the program.
READ MORE: Saskatoon-wide composting program would benefit landfill
Brenda Wallace, the city’s director of environmental and corporate initiatives, said this is another step towards diverting waste from the landfill.
“A successful waste diversion program, which would include diverting organics, is critical to deferring the closure of the landfill,” Wallace said in a release.
“Organics represents our single biggest opportunity to reach our target of diverting 70 per cent of our waste from the landfill.”
The city is looking to reduce the amount of waste heading to the landfill by 70 per cent by 2023 in order to eliminate the need for a new one.
“It would cost an estimated 26 million dollars to close the existing landfill and 100 million dollars to establish a new one,” Wallace said.
City officials said a recent waste and recycling survey done for them by Insightrix found that 79 per cent of those surveyed strongly or somewhat support a city-wide organics collection program.
Wallace said the next step is to hold a series of discussions this fall to gather input on the program. No dates have been announced for those meetings.
READ MORE: Saskatoon city council votes to develop user-pay garbage collection model
City council voted on Aug. 29 to develop a new collection model that would have homeowners pay for waste collection through a monthly utility bill that could be based on cart size or collection frequency.
Homeowners currently pay for garbage collection through property taxes.
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