November, 2006 Update: IIn 2005 and 2006 City Council directed City staff to start examining the makeup and quantities of IC&I and C&D waste in the City. Most Ottawa residents and City councillors didn't realize the impact on local residential neighbourhoods that large, long-term, expansions of the Carp and Navan dumps will have. Both these dumps service mostly commercial garbage and the City staff and council have completely ignored this sector thinking it didn't have anything to do with them.

If the City of Ottawa is to do the right thing, it must immediately work towards developing a sustainable waste management plan for both residential and IC&I/C&D waste that doesn't require the 5 landfills that it currently uses. Unfortunately, even the newly elected mayor and City Council don't share this sense of urgency and this lack of commitment will likely result in the Carp and Navan dump expansions proceeding.

After more than a year of requests by city council, City Staff finally started working on an IC&I waste study in November, 2006. At this point, it is unclear what the real goal/motivation of this study is: Is it to prove that we need 5 landfills... or is to prove that we don't? See the progress on the City's IC&I study HERE.

Background

70% of the waste generated in Ottawa is non-residential, also known as Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional (IC&I) waste.

IIC&I waste is regulated by the Province and the City of Ottawa continues to wait for the Province to do something about the growing IC&I problem. Although the City of Ottawa planners say that this commercial waste isn't their problem... it is... because this IC&I waste is filling up landfills within the City limits.

There are many examples of municipalities that have control of all their waste and we recommend that Ottawa's "Sustainable Waste Diversion and Landfill Strategy" should include plans to close privately-owned landfills in the city and take back the ability to monitor and control all this waste.

The nice thing about looking at diversion in the IC&I sector is that the biggest waste generators could be easily approached by the City, haulers, and diversion operators to come up with win-win-win-win solutions. For examples, what if these groups of businesses were approached first to come up with a centralized compost system for IC&I organics:

- Fast Food Restaurants
- Grocery Stores
- Cafeterias in Government Buildings

Restaurants

There are at least 20 McDonald's, 12 Burger Kings, 13 Wendy's, 17 KFC, 67 Tim Horton's, and 14 Dairy Queens. This is almost 150 restaurants for 6 chains.

*** November, 2006 Update: Tim Horton's has installed recycle bins at most of their Ottawa restaurants and McDonald's seems to be doing the same. We encourage you to take a moment to tell your local restaurant manager that you appreciate their efforts. Also, please make sure you use the recycle bins to make sure this isn't just a short-term trial. Hopefully, sometime in 2007 we'll be able to get feedback on both these recycle programs. ***

Restaurants Evaluate Composting Option: HERE

Bio-plastics for compostable cutlery: HERE

More compostable products: HERE

Still more... with prices: HERE

Grocery Stores

There are at least 16 Loblaws, 20 Loeb, 9 Independent in Ottawa for a total of almost 50 grocery stores. Do any of these stores do organics collection for waste produce? Or does it all end up in landfill? If each store threw out 50kgs of produce/day that is 2.5 tonnes/day or 875 tonnes/year. At $75/tonne this costs the stores $65K in disposal costs/year. Produce waste is perfect for organic waste processing as there is no contamination. I have heard that many of these stores throw out several shopping carts of bad produce/day so 50kgs may actually be very low. We will be studying this further.

Solid Waste in Grocery Stores Strategy: HERE

Some Interesting IC&I Links

British Report on Food Waste: HERE

Small & Medium Enterprise Waste Management: HERE