The problem with Ontario's plan to ban food waste from landfills

A great idea but as per anything the gov't touches, piss poor execution.

There also might be a reason nobody wanted to buy the soil that resulted and it could have something to do with the fact that people don't like to be raped twice for something. Once when they take it away and once when it's turned into compost and sold back to you.

Give the soil away and people will take it but that still doesn't mitigate the problem of "piles of compost" that aren't being composted because the stuff smells, attracts rats and other vermin. So until they come up with a better method than rather than just mulching the stuff to make compost they're going to have to put it in the landfill otherwise they'll continue to have all the issues that come with recycling food waste.

Not all places collect food waste yet not too mention small northern communities would have a bear problem. My city collects yard waste and giveaway the soil in the spring. It goes fast. There?s been no talk about adding food waste

I can't see why there would be a problem with food waste composted. Millorganite fertilizer

Has been sold in the US for years. I graduated in '71 and it was being sold then. Food waste compost is just one process short of this stuff. People put it on the lawn.

I don't think it's the process that's the problem I think it's the sheer volume of the stuff that's the issue. They can only compost so much and after that it has to sit till they get to it.


And as everyone knows, rotting food waste isn't exactly a pleasant item to deal with. So my guess would be that the cost of building large enough composting facilities to handle the vast amounts of the stuff would be prohibitive not to mention dangerous because of the methane buildup.

An example. We have a composting facility miles from us and across the harbour. Well a few years ago we started getting a rotten meat smell in our laundry. I changed everything in the laundry, put in a new P trap, changed light bulbs to CFL and washed the walls etc. As it turns out it wasn't my house at all it was the "composting" facility that was located miles away who weren't following the regulations when composting and had stored vast amounts of the stuff.

So you can see where people get pissed when these facilities allow rotting food waste to sit and until they can get a process to get rid of the stuff that's quick and safe it won't change.

I don't think it's the process that's the problem I think it's the sheer volume of the stuff that's the issue. They can only compost so much and after that it has to sit till they get to it.


And as everyone knows, rotting food waste isn't exactly a pleasant item to deal with. So my guess would be that the cost of building large enough composting facilities to handle the vast amounts of the stuff would be prohibitive not to mention dangerous because of the methane buildup.

An example. We have a composting facility miles from us and across the harbour. Well a few years ago we started getting a rotten meat smell in our laundry. I changed everything in the laundry, put in a new P trap, changed light bulbs to CFL and washed the walls etc. As it turns out it wasn't my house at all it was the "composting" facility that was located miles away who weren't following the regulations when composting and had stored vast amounts of the stuff.

So you can see where people get pissed when these facilities allow rotting food waste to sit and until they can get a process to get rid of the stuff that's quick and safe it won't change.

We used to, when we lived in a Northern Village, compost everything except stuff That attracted dogs. When we switched to a house in the bush we tried the same thing. No No No! May as well have sent out a personal invitation to every bear within 10 km. Stopped that practice quick. However, there needs to be some way of dealing with this.

This quickly brought to mind a story I heard about human sanitation in the tropics. People didn't dig pits under their outdoor toilets, just let pigs run loose who quickly cleaned up after anyone heading out to the two hole facilities. Then they sold the pigs to city markets, keeping the oinkers for local use penned up and away from the treats. We should do the same, just feed it(organic garbage) to pigs and sell the 'fattened' piggies to China.

You don�t pay to put out your organics, they take it from the curb with your garbage and recycling for free. And it sounds like they give it away for free too.

I don�t think �government� is the problem, nor that �anything the government touches has piss poor execution�. It seems like per anything that�s left up to individuals to do responsibly, the problem is too many shitheads out there who put things in the organics bin that don�t belong there, making sorting a gargantuan and costly task. The biggest part of the problem is still on the supply side though. We still produce way too much unnecessary waste and really need to start clamping down on that nonsense.

But it doesn�t sound like an unsolvable problem it just requires some novel ideas and some investment. I�ve long liked the idea of banning restaurants and grocery stores from throwing out perfectly good food. It�s always seemed ridiculous to me that 30 years after the advent of recycling, businesses are still allowed to put all their organics and recyclables in the trash if they wish.

You don�t pay to put out your organics, they take it from the curb with your garbage and recycling for free. And it sounds like they give it away for free too.

I don�t think �government� is the problem, nor that �anything the government touches has piss poor execution�. It seems like per anything that�s left up to individuals to do responsibly, the problem is too many shitheads out there who put things in the organics bin that don�t belong there, making sorting a gargantuan and costly task. The biggest part of the problem is still on the supply side though. We still produce way too much unnecessary waste and really need to start clamping down on that nonsense.

But it doesn�t sound like an unsolvable problem it just requires some novel ideas and some investment. I�ve long liked the idea of banning restaurants and grocery stores from throwing out perfectly good food. It�s always seemed ridiculous to me that 30 years after the advent of recycling, businesses are still allowed to put all their organics and recyclables in the trash if they wish.

Please don't tell me you honestly believe that organics pickup is free. Because you actually pay for that service though your taxes and nothing in life or civics politics especially is free.

But anyway, even if everyone only put what was allowed in recycling it's like I said, the sheer volume of the stuff that's the problem. Some jurisdictions have started farming it for the methane but that's still proving very costly which means it's cost prohibitive so, unless someone comes up with a more creative way to dispose of or turn the stuff into something different and beneficial this problem isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

BTW I just watched our recycler pick up our organics along with our garbage and promptly toss it in the same bin on the truck. So to think that it's just the consumer who's the problem is knieve.

The City of Calgary, which shouldn't be trusted to run a lemonade stand on someone's front lawn, stored clamshell plastics in shipping containers for the better part of the last year, all because the market for them in China had collapsed and the Chinese were no longer accepting them. The storage cost over $300,000. In the end, to cut the storage fees, the city ended up dumping them in the landfill.

That's how much you can trust the governments, all three levels of them in this delusional country, to properly manage recycling. This is going to go down in history as one of the biggest cons the governments ever fell for, at the hands of both the delusional environmental activists as well as the grifters who got into recycling, got paid massively for it, then shut down altogether and left the public (as usual) holding the bill for the disaster. Said it before, said it again, incineration of ALL trash is the only way to go, and properly disposing of any toxic ash afterwards is looking a hell of a lot easier to accomplish that dealing with all these goddamn plastics blowing around in the wind everywhere ever will be.