SASKATOON -- The City of Saskatoon has introduced a plan to reduce the amount of waste put in the landfill, and achieve diversion rates that other Canadian municipalities are already seeing.
According to the city’s director of sustainability Jeanna South, Saskatoon is seeing about 24 per cent of waste diversion from the landfill, and the solid waste diversion and reduction plan aims to greatly improve that number.
“When we contribute to a clean and healthy community, we contribute to a higher quality of life,” said South.
“Some of the actions that would result in diversion include introducing incentives to see better waste sorting, we look to material bans for the city landfill, we look to a construction and demolition program to encourage use of Recovery Park, we would see, potentially, a multi-unit residential organics program, a bulk waste collection program, and then potentially a textile diversion program.”
South says it’s too early to determine a cost for the plan.
In 2015, city council set a target of 70 per cent waste diversion from Saskatoon's landfill by 2023.
They’re projecting that this plan, combined with current and in progress diversion projects, would have waste diversion to between 41 and 50 per cent by that time, and between 51 and 79 per cent diversion by 2030.
The city says more than 70 percent of what people in Saskatoon put in the garbage, could be kept out of the landfill.
“Simply by reducing the waste that’s in the community, then we know that that generates a much better place to live, and a healthier place to live.”
