The City of Calgary is looking at the idea of changing green cart collection to help save money.
According to a city report, Calgarians are putting out less than half the amount of food and yard waste during the winter months than they do in the fall.
If the collection is scaled back to every other week instead of the current weekly collection, there could be a savings of more than $2 million. Data shows Calgary’s food and yard waste dropped from a high of 12,000 tonnes in October to just 5,000 in December.
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In the report, Waste and Recycling Services (WRS) says there is an opportunity to achieve additional program cost savings by moving to every-other-week collection from November to April. The cost savings would be through labour and fuel and there would also be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Ward 4 Councillor Sean Chu says he’s encouraged by the report and supports a move to reducing the frequency of green bin collection in the winter.
“That’s very encouraging,” Chu said on Saturday. “It makes sense that we drop from every week pick up to every two weeks because in the report, it says in October it’s about 12,000 tons and in December it’s only five (thousand tons). So it’s actually less than half.
“I listen to people and a lot of people who contact me and say, ‘Hey, we are not going to use that much.’ In the summertime, everybody understands you have a lot of yard waste but in the winter, most of the people have one or two bags. Small bags from inside the kitchen.”
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But the report notes there are some risks to changing the green cart collection to every-other-week in winter. An early spring or a late start to winter could lead to overstuffed compost bins and the potential for increased odours. The city has compared green cart service levels in 14 other Canadian municipalities. Both Airdrie and Cochrane have every-other-week winter collection and Chestermere has weekly year-round collection.
The proposal will go to a city committee on Wednesday.
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