Regina to roll out green bins as it prepares to launch organic waste program in September

The City of Regina will begin delivering green bins to houses throughout the city this weekend, marking the start of its residential organic waste pickup service.

Approximately 67,000 green carts will be delivered Monday to Saturday throughout August, with the city-wide service starting Sept. 4.

"Residents will be receiving their green cart and zip-tied to the back of it will be their kitchen catcher," said Janet Aird, the City of Regina's manager of program development and delivery for water, waste and environment.

"The kitchen catcher is to be taken inside, and there's a bunch of information [and] materials about the program in the kitchen catcher and then [it] can be placed on your counter to collect your materials to take to your green cart for disposal."

All food scraps, including meat, bones, dairy and greases, as well as yard waste and soiled paper products like paper towel, cardboard and tissues can be placed in the green bin.

The carts will be collected weekly between April and October and then biweekly between November and March.

Garbage will also switch to being collected biweekly year-round as of September.

If you're worried that the bins will stink, Aird said the city received a limited number of odour related complaints during their pilot program.

The start of the organic waste pickup service also signals a soon-to-be-implemented model for how Regina residents pay for waste services.

City council voted in October, to embrace use-pay model for all of its waste services.

Currently, the fee for recycling (collected in blue carts) shows up on utility bills, while regular garbage collection (gathered in brown carts) falls under property taxes.

Starting on Jan. 1, 2024, recycling, garbage collection and organic waste collection will be displayed on a resident's utility bill.

Through this program, residents will be able to chose between the current 360-litre cart and a smaller 240-litre cart.

If households choose the smaller 240-litre cart the annual fee will be $193.45, or $16.12 per month. Those with a 360-litre container will pay $284.70 per year, or $23.73 per month.

An income-based rebate of $54.75 annually or $4.56 monthly will automatically be given to low-income seniors and people with disabilities who qualify for it.

Regina has been working toward an organic waste pickup service for years.

It's part of a plan to divert organic waste from landfills — a key commitment in the city's energy and sustainability framework, which is meant to help the city become a renewable, net-zero community by 2050.

Currently, the city diverts about 20 per cent of its waste from landfill. That's unchanged since 2015.

One of the only ways to achieve the goal of diverting 65 per cent of all waste from the landfill by 2025, as included in the framework, is to implement a green bin program.

City officials said the program will help prolong the life of its landfill, but only if everyone pitches in.

"About 50 per cent of your current garbage cart is organic material that can be diverted through the green cart program. So we need people to be sorting correctly in order to achieve those goals," Aird said.

It will also cut the annual amount of waste sent to the landfill by about 24,000 tonnes and eliminate more than 10,800 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year during its first decade of operations, according to the framework.

Reporter

Alexander Quon is a reporter with CBC Saskatchewan based in Regina. After working in Atlantic Canada for four years he's happy to be back in his home province. He has previously worked with the CBC News investigative unit in Nova Scotia and Global News in Halifax. Alexander specializes in data-reporting, COVID-19 and municipal political coverage. He can be reached at: [email protected].

With files from Nick Frew, Laura Sciarpelletti