Conduct a pilot program to collect food scraps from apartments, condominiums and schools. The pilot would be developed in cooperation with Metro Vancouver, and in consultation or partnership with private haulers.
Capture the Organics
Organics are the next low-hanging fruit in terms of diversion potential and mitigating climate change. Collecting and processing organics offers tremendous potential for creating low-barrier and high-tech green jobs, generating bio-energy and returning nutrients and structural elements to the soil.
The City recently started collecting fruits and vegetable scraps from single-family homes. Going forward, a key strategy will be to ensure city-wide collection of the full spectrum of food scraps and compostable paper across all sectors. The success of that strategy, however, depends on establishing enough facilities in the region to process these organics. Metro Vancouver estimates that there are 460,000 tonnes of food scraps and food-soiled paper going to landfill or incinerator in the region. So far, there is only one facility in the region that is licensed to collect food scraps, and its processing capacity is 50,000 tonnes. A second bio-gas facility is planned for an additional 80,000 tonnes. The City can assist Metro Vancouver with filling the gap by exploring options to develop new facilities.
Actions for this strategy
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Pilot the Collection of Food Scraps for Apartments, Condominiums and Schools
Expand Organics Collection to Include the Full Spectrum of Food Scraps
Expand organics collection for residents in single-detached homes to the full spectrum of food scraps (fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, dairy, bread, cereal products, cooked food, and food-soiled paper), and shift to weekly collection of food scraps and yard trimmings. Garbage will shift to every-other-week collection, with a long-term vision of monthly collection by 2020.
Create a Team of "Compost Coaches" for Single-family Residences
Create a team of “compost coaches” to deliver community-based social marketing to single family residents.
Assess the Feasibility of Developing Facilities to Convert Food Scraps to Bio-Gas or Compost
Assess the feasibility of developing organic material conversion facilities to produce bio-gas and/or compost at locations such as the Vancouver landfill and in district energy systems.
Subsidize Pet Waste Composters
Subsidize backyard composters specifically designed for pet waste. This would mirror the subsidy the City offers now for backyard composters for yard and garden trimmings and raw fruit and vegetable scraps.
Make Organics Collection Mandatory for Apartments, Condos, Businesses and Institutions by 2015
Make the collection of food scraps and other compostable materials mandatory for all apartments, condominiums, businesses and institutions by 2015.
Expand the Team of "Compost Coaches" to Apartments, Condos, Businesses and Institutions
Expand the team of “compost coaches” to deliver community-based social marketing and provide on-site technical support when organics collection becomes mandatory for apartments, condos, businesses and institutions by 2015.
Explore the Creation of a Social Enterprise to Collect Organics in Downtown Core
Explore the possibility of social enterprises collecting food scraps by bicycle from businesses in the downtown core, and delivering the material to a transfer station or small organics conversion facility in the Green Enterprize Zone. (Establishing a Green Enterprize Zone is one of the strategies in the action plan for the Green Economy goal.)
Expand the Landfill Gas Collection System at the Vancouver Landfill
Expand the landfill gas collection system at the Vancouver Landfill, with a goal of increasing the capture rate to 75%. Continue to use the gas to heat greenhouses, and explore new opportunities like converting it to liquid natural gas to fuel City vehicles.
Comments
Thank you for your input! The strategies and actions listed here are drafts. Read the final version of the Greenest City Action Plan.
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bioenergy and landfill gas -caution
Creating infrastructure to capture energy from some waste sources makes sense for types of waste for which the supply is secure. For example, energy from organic materials can make sense as there will be a continued flow of organics. Ensure that the landfill gas capture projects do not come to rely on that source of energy and thus require unnecessary waste production to fuel them.
Bio-Mass married with District Energy
Consider Bio-Mass energy technologies (similar to the combine heat-power unit being build on UBC http://www.globe-net.com/articles/2010/august/17/nexterra-to-power-ubc.a...) in inner city District Energy projects.
High density neighbourhoods undergoing District Energy rhetrofit could "fuel" heat and power infrastructure in their own neighborhood. This could eliminate the need for compost transport and supplement strained centralized infrastructure systems as neighborhood in-fill and become more dense
Investigate on-site in-vessel commercial composting technology
There is equipment developed and used in Korea and Japan that compost food scraps at the source. They heat, turn, introduce oxygen, and reduce the mass of the food scraps by 70% via evaporation and decomposition into compost. They are small and use a surprisingly minimal amount of energy - of which is mostly fromrenewable sources in BC. Why transport water to off-site composting facilities?