By Tanya Ruscheinski (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 1, 2012
Back in the winter of 2011, UFV conducted a nine-week pilot program to test how composting could work on campus. It’s been a while since the successful test-run ended, but now plans are brewing to implement the program regularly.
Lisa Banks, the new owner of Down-To-Earth Kitchen Compost Pick-up, is working with the university to establish a plan that will bring composting to UFV permanently.
While nothing is certain yet, Banks met with Martin Kelly, UFV Student Life programmer, last week, to take a look around and get a feel for what would be involved. “I walk[ed] around and [did] an evaluation of what your needs are,” said Banks, who continued on to say she is hopeful that a plan can be put in place and UFV can begin to reap the benefits of composting.
“You will be down-sizing the waste for sure,” said Banks, “especially with the coffee shops; that’s a lot of waste that’s getting thrown out that could be composted,” referring to all of the cups and tissue paper that tend to end up in the garbage for lack of a better disposal outlet. “It’s exciting,” concluded Banks.
Meanwhile, the City of Abbotsford is also coordinating with Down-to-Earth and is already running a successful composting program in many of its buildings, an initiative that began with only a small group of employees over three years ago.
“We started just on the fourth floor [of city hall] in 2008 and taking it home into our own backyard composters,” said Barry Azevedo, the solid waste and environmental engineer at City Hall.
Since then, the program has spread through the rest of the floors at City Hall and also exists in the fire halls and most of the main parts of the city. “We haven’t gotten to ARC and MRC yet,” said Azevedo, “but that’s something that we will be looking at.”
Azevedo noted the possibility of changing by-laws to require that composting programs be established in all city buildings. He also noted how the response to the program so far has been “very positive” and once people get accustomed to using the compost it becomes second-nature.
“They like to see that we’re leading the way and that we have experience with this,” explained Azevedo, “so that when we do make requirements of them, we already have the experience in it.”
He reassured that a process of changing by-laws would involve a lot of consulting with businesses and is not something that would be put in place by tomorrow.
While regular curb-side compost collection hasn’t been established yet, there has been a pilot program that involved 425 homes in the Chief Dan George area. Azevedo explained how the results have been encouraging and garbage collection has been moved to every other week due to the sheer drop in the amount of garbage being bagged.
“We’re hopefully planning on expanding that to the whole city and planning on doing that perhaps September of this year,” Azevedo said.
With hopes of composting at UFV, Azevedo is eager to see what happens. “I think it’s very positive and I’m very excited to hear it,” he said. “I think UFV is doing a great job by pursuing [composting]; you want to stay ahead of the curb.”
