bless the beasts and the green bins

Here’s a lighthearted item from the eternal challenge of what to do with the rubbish.

The City of Ottawa rolled out an extensive ‘green bin’ refuse collection program earlier this year.

Most households, mine included, have been issued a green, waist-high, wheeled plastic hopper, where one may discard an enormous range of compostable items. Besides lawn clippings and such, it’s also fine to add things not generally recommended for ordinary compost piles: BBQ ashes, meat, bones, cooking oil, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and pet litter. But not dog poo. Yet. (The processor, Orgaworld, is challenging the Ottawa facility’s current Certificate of Approval, seeking permission to include plastic bags, pet feces, diapers and sanitary products.)

Once a week this is all collected and taken to a large facility that renders it into compost. I am unsure where that compost is actually going. (Frankly, I would not want Orgaworld compost in my yard or farm, if only because I still compost all my benign organic material and use my green bin for stuff I never want to see again, like noxious weeds.)

The concept certainly sounds laudable: be green and prolong the lifespan of existing landfills by diverting material that can be reused in an environmentally sound manner.

Reactions to the program remain mixed.

Many love the idea. It all goes away! And becomes something good!  (As shown in this happy graphic on the city’s web site.)

Others contend the cost-benefit ratio is questionable, the end product’s quality is debatable and that real diversion rates have not lived up to projections – here, and in cities with similar programs of longer duration.

Irritation over Ottawa’s Green Bin program even prompted beef farmer Mark Scharfeto to challenge incumbent Osgoode City Councillor Doug Thompson to represent Ward 20, where the processing plant was built.

The best part of this so far, in terms of pure amusement, is this week’s evidence that the supposedly impervious bin – with the special lid latch – is no match at all for a determined raccoon.

Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor captured it all on video, here.

Now if we could only build a processing plant full of voracious raccoons – who also ate diapers and pizza boxes – urban garbage problems would be solved.