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North Bay residents could see a shift in their curbside trash collection as the City of North Bay's waste diversion strategy evolves over the coming years, including using clear bags for waste, dropping to a one-bag limit, and adopting a bag tag model in which no garbage receptacles would be picked up without an associated cost.
North Bay City Council's infrastructure and operations committee received its annual report on Tuesday from Karin Pratte, senior environment and facilities engineer, and Victoria Thomas, an environmental control officer.
Pratte led off by advising the Merrick Landfill site has only 16 years of life remaining. It takes "10 to 15 years to get approval to even expand on our existing landfill site if we wanted to do that. So waste diversion is really critical to ensure that we can extend the life of that site and we will continue to come forward with new initiatives to increase diversion."
In 2022, the City of North Bay switched to in-house landfill operations. City officials have warned a new landfill would cost millions in up-front capital and would require tens of millions of dollars to construct over the years until its completion.
Environmental Services is weighing a recommendation to ban putting blue box recyclables in the local waste stream. "In order to enforce a ban on our blue box recyclables, we will be looking at implementing a clear bag program," said Pratte.
The team recently completed its second annual audit examining the composition of the materials that are arriving at the landfill.
"Unfortunately, a significant volume is blue box materials," Pratte told the committee. "So, we are investigating the opportunity to potentially ban box materials in our waste stream, which would ensure that residents are using the blue box stream as opposed to using the waste stream for those materials."
Pratte clarified the ban must accompany any clear bag program. "If we don't do the clear bags, but we do the ban, it's very difficult to ensure that we are enforcing that ban." Asked how effective the measure would be, Pratte responded, "I think this would have been a significant impact."
Mayor Peter Chirico and Coun. Mac Bain both raised the possibility of eventually moving to a pay-per-bag model. "Is that maybe something that you would include in a presentation to council?" Bain asked Pratte.
"Absolutely if council was interested, we would be happy to bring forward different service level changes," Pratte responded.
The Merrick Landfill's "lifespan is completely dependent on the volume of waste that is received. If we reduce it by 50 per cent," its life will be extended in turn, Pratte replied to a question about its future viability from Coun. Justine Mallah. "In comparison to other communities, we do have a little bit more waste, per person, on average, going to our landfill."
See related: Council backs changes to local waste collection
See also: New garbage bag limit in place; charge for extra bag is $2
At the end of 2022 — a year after implementing the two-bag limit — the City saw a year-over-year reduction of 10.8 per cent in tonnage of residential waste going to the landfill.
At the same time, blue box recycling and leaf and yard waste composting were both up, as compared to 2021.
Recycling increased by more than 150 metric tonnes to 3,242.92 metric tonnes, while leaf and yard waste composting climbed to 1,015 metric tonnes, from 943 metric tonnes in 2021.
The City finished 2022 with an overall waste diversion rate of 24 per cent, up four per cent when compared to 2021 and an increase over both 2020’s 18 per cent and 2019’s 19 per cent.
Mallah also inquired about organic and yard waste and any possible strategies. Thomas observed "only 14 per cent" of all waste audited in 2022 fell into a category combining food waste and contaminated recyclables. In this year's audit, due to be released in July, the food waste will have its own category and help guide any recommendations to put a green bin program in place.
The waste diversion strategy has five central and constant goals:
1. Increase program participation by those eligible to receive the service.
2. Expand the scope of eligibility to more users.
3. Decrease contaminants (non-recyclables) in the recycling stream.
4. Provide diversion solutions for more types of waste products.
5. Reduce the amount of material entering the local waste stream.
Pratte highlighted the success of the reduced two-bag limit and noted the waste diversion strategy "speaks to some very specific targets," that give the team something to strive towards and to measure against in order to determine if the strategy is, in fact, effective.
For instance, in waste generated — the total volume of waste going to the landfill — the baseline year had almost 49,000 tonnes in 2019. The five-year goal was a 10 per cent decrease, meaning by the end of 2024 the goal was to drop down to 44,000 tonnes.
"I'm very happy to report that as of the end of 2022, we have already reached that goal. So we are under that 44,000 tonnes and so we've already reached that five-year goal," said Pratte. "Now that doesn't mean that we end there. Now we look to new goals to continue to reduce the volume of waste going to our landfill site. But, it gives us the indication that some of the measures that we have already implemented do seem to be having an impact, which is a good thing."
There are still challenges. Last year, Environmental Services performed a waste audit in conjunction with Canadore College. Pratte reiterated 60 per cent of the material that is going to the Merrick Landfill site is divertable material.
"We already have programs for that material where they could be diverted from our landfill. So our five-year goal was to get down to 40 per cent by the end of 2024. We did another waste audit just last week with Canadore College. We do not have the results of that audit yet. However, it does look like we are in a very similar range. Now very rough estimate. But yeah, we are we are not down to that 40 per cent quite yet, unfortunately.
"There are some other measures that will need to get put in place if we are looking to strive to get to that 40 per cent number. Right now, we're accepting two bags per week. If we do eventually go to one day, would that be expected to increase our diversion?" Pratte continued. "I think we've seen what a significant impact going from three receptacles to two has made and I think moving down to one receptacle, you would see a very significant increase in the volume of recyclables."
See: Banning collection of textiles another way to extend life of landfill
Environmental Services is also investigating opening a local waste diversion site. "So this would be what I would consider a one-stop shop for waste diversion which would be local here in North Bay. It would be open year-round it would include hazardous waste, recycling depot, mattress recycling, leaf and yard waste, textiles, tires, scrap metal as well as electronics."
