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Put composting at forefront of waste study

Editor: Canmore has okayed a study ‘to investigate options and alternatives for locally managing both municipal solid waste and biosolids’.

Editor:

Canmore has okayed a study ‘to investigate options and alternatives for locally managing both municipal solid waste and biosolids’.

As we celebrate another annual Environment Week (June 5-11), we of the Bow Valley Clean Air Society (BVCAS) read with interest the articles and public feedback on the subject of waste disposal.

In the Bow Valley we have recycling for glass, tin, plastics and paper products. But when it comes to dealing with our non-recyclable waste streams we are way behind.

Our garbage is trucked to Calgary and biosolids from our sewage treatment plant all the way to Penhold for disposal. And we have no disposal system for residential and commercial food waste.

It is encouraging that the high school is piloting a compost project to utilize organic waste from the school food program (Outlook, May 5). Bighorn municipality is testing the use of waste lime kiln dust from Graymont with biosolids from Exshaw to produce a product that is suitable for quarry reclamation. Banff has an indoor facility that composts organics and biosolids. Perhaps Canmore can lead the charge on a residential composting program?

Without such a composting program, we have few alternatives:

1) We can put our apple core into the plastic garbage bag, dump it into the bear proof bin and truck it to landfill at Calgary where it decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen) until it breaks down and finally releases into the environment, methane (CH4), which is 20 times as noxious a green house gas (GHG) as CO2 .

(2) We can grind it up in the garburator where it goes into the wastewater stream and eventually makes its way to Penhold along with the rest of Canmore’s biosolids. This path at least results in that apple core being composted aerobically (with oxygen) with less methane emissions when it is treated with the other biosolids at the sewage treatment plant. However, it has the added environmental cost of still needing to be trucked away with the rest of the biosolids to Penhold.

(3) A more practical solution to the problem would be to compost that apple core locally, aerobically and turn the byproduct into a compost that can be used in landscaping and ultimately in our gardens. A proper community composting system which composts that apple core aerobically would reduce the amount of GHG emissions by not producing methane and it would save trucking our sewage treatment biosolids out of the community. An added bonus, of course, would be reducing the amount of refuse filling our already stressed landfill sites.

In this day of searching for ways to cut down greenhouse gas emissions, and in the spirit of Environment Week, we want Town council to put the issue of composting of food waste forefront in their waste stream study.

Karen Kunelius,

Bow Valley Clean Air Society

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