Canmore, Alberta, Canada is being audited to find out how effective garbage, composting, and recycling is in the town.
An audit of residential and commercial waste by a third party will determine where contamination may be coming from in the different waste streams on Canmore. Calgary’s S-Cubed Environmental will be conducting the audit which will lead the recommendations on how to improve the existing systems and what is currently working.
“Some of the take-homes will be if more education is needed or if it should be more targeted with different sectors, but also if more bins are needed and in certain areas,” said Simon Robins, the Town of Canmore's supervisor of solid waste services.
“If we see triple bins (garbage, recycling and composting bins that are together) perform really well at diversion, maybe we need to look at providing more options. If it doesn’t, then we may see the existing system is good the way it is.”
The audit will be looking at areas with garbage, recycling, and composting bins that are together and other areas that only have one garbage bin or recycling and garbage bins. It will also collect information on areas of Canmore that feature many multi- and single-family homes.
“The samples we do are very specific. … They’re taken from a variety of bins in town. Each sample is only 100 kilograms, but it gets good coverage,” said Robins. “We looked at each bin configuration to see if each stream was different, so they’ll compile all the data after and see if there are differences when people have more or fewer options.”
The last audit was conducted in 2016, prior to Canmore’s composting program launching.