Only two months have passed since Port Moody began its new biweekly waste-collection schedule but the city claims to have already reduced the amount of trash sent to the landfill by approximately 40% and increased its recovery of organic waste by more than 66% over this time last year.
Bridget Pronovost of the city's engineering, parks and operations department told The Tri-City News that since the city's switch from collecting garbage every week to now collecting it every other week, more than 160 tonnes of waste - or 20 tonnes a week - have been diverted from local dumps.
"Typically, we saw between 52 and 55 tonnes a week of garbage," Pronovost said of last year's average haul. "And now we have maybe 65 tonnes every two weeks, so that's a vast difference."
Pronovost said she expects the gap to grow as people get used to the eight-week-old schedule while city staff continue to answer residents' queries and concerns about the new collection model.
Chief among the residents' complaints is why there hasn't been a reduction in municipal collection fees with the decrease in garbage collection?
Pronovost's answer is twofold.
First, she told The News that Port Moody residents have received a break on collection fees by not having to shoulder a tipping fee increase from $87 to $97 per tonne that came into effect across Metro Vancouver at the beginning of the year.
"And hopefully, by the end of this year, the garbage tonnage will go down to a point where we can [avoid another increase] when the garbage disposal cost goes up again next year to well over $100."
Second, Pronovost said services haven't been cut, just shifted, because any slack left by halving the garbage collection was taken up by the doubling of the green bin collection from biweekly to weekly at the start of the year.
And while the green bins are typically under-used this time of year, with little yard waste and residents more willing to leave food scraps out for longer in the cold, the city has still seen a huge jump in their use so far compared to last year.
In January and February 2010, according to Pronovost, Port Moody collected 150 tonnes of green bin waste.
In January and February 2011, the city has collected exactly two-thirds more green bin waste, or 250 tonnes.
That organic waste is taken to Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre in Richmond for composting at a cost to the city of $53.75 per tonne.
Currently, about 6,500 homes and townhouses in Port Moody have green-waste bins, with 15 additional townhouse complexes expected to be brought onboard by next year.
Pronovost said she hopes that in the near future, the city will be able to operate some kind of organic waste program for residents of highrises, which are all currently serviced by private waste-disposal companies.
