A special meeting of the Bay St. George Waste Management Committee has been set for 2 p.m. Sunday at the Kippens Community Centre.
Membership from all towns and local service districts are urged to attend.
On July 1, the cost of disposing of any waste including organic kitchen waste, at the site in St. George’s will increase to $164 a tonne. By contrast, that same tonne of organic waste would have only cost $59 a tonne in tipping fees in 2017.
On an individual residence basis, the average cost of tipping fees will triple from $33 per household to about $100 per household.
And while the cost of tipping fees is a severe blow, especially to smaller towns and local service districts, it makes the diversion of all waste from the St. George’s site possible.
With this in mind the committee is asking its members for approval to conduct a Bay-wide program to increase the amount of organic waste going to the transfer station.
The following are the steps the committee is asked to approve:
1— Sponsor a series of composting workshops and meetings with the experts from the Multi Materials Stewardship Board to teach the residents of the Bay area the fundamentals of composting. These meetings to be held in each community and to include literature on how to compost. If funds and the supply holds out, attendees will be rewarded by a free composting bin.
2— As a follow up, the committee will be applying for a green team and volunteers to conduct in-home sessions in which the composter and its use is explained.
3— For communities that wish, the committee will be arranging meetings with the companies that manufacture community composters that can take up to 40 houses worth of organic materials that may be placed adjacent to community gardens.
4— To help towns and local service districts reduce the organic waste that goes to the landfill/transfer station, the committee will be asked to approve a rebate to all towns of funds held by the committee that were acquired when the towns and local service districts overpaid for tipping fees in 2013. While the committee will not attach any strings to the use of the funds, they could be used to shore up divergence strategies that could reduce their bill for tipping fees.
Other divergence strategies include: the option to now recycle paper and cardboard at Scotia Recyling, provided three specific conditions, which will be explained at the meeting, are met; the disposal of tin cans at local scrapyards; collecting deposit paid beverage containers at the side of the road; and holding sidewalk flea markets to recycle large items that would go to the landfill otherwise.
