Edmontonians who live in apartments and condos are going to have to pick up a food scraps bin for their kitchens.
That’s after city council approved a new bylaw Wednesday that expanded food scraps and recycling collection to apartments and condos, among other changes.
“Increasing the separate collection of food scraps and recyclables will help keep more waste out of the landfill and reduce emissions,” the city said in a news release.
The city said this change will bring food scraps collection to 167,000 homes across 3,400 properties between fall of 2023 and 2027.
Each building will need to have disposal bins or carts for each type of waste close to each other, and the city said it will work with individual properties to make sure the requirements of the bylaw can be met.
Ward Métis Coun. Ashley Salvador said the addition of apartments and condos to the food scraps collection program is exciting.
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“Ensuring that our multi-stream collection is not just applicable for individual residential homeowners but also multi-family is a really important step,” she said.
“I think that it will be a fantastic change across Edmonton.”
Another change to the bylaw is around the types of liners allowed in food scraps containers.
“The city initially required that any plastic bags used in food scraps carts be BPI or BNQ-certified compostable,” said the city.
“However, in practice, compostable plastics do not fully break down in most city and regional industrial processing facilities and, as a result, are removed from the organics stream during processing.”
The city said residents can use any paper or plastic bag as a liner now but the approach with the least environmental impact is to avoid the use of bags or liners. The next preferred liner would be a paper bag or newspaper.
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