You know what I love best about the organic green bin?
Well just about everything, actually. But if I had to pick one thing, it would be that it provides a home for the guck that congregates regularly in the kitchen drain.
You do the dishes, you rinse the remains of the detergent down the drain, and there lies the toe jam of the kitchen: little bits and bobbles of your meal. A couple of hunks of pasta, a few strands of what may formerly have been green leafy vegetables and several dark, brown UFOs - unidentified food objects.
They used to go into the garbage where they worked their magic over time to create the symphony of obnoxious odours that forced you to move your garbage bag to the garage a couple of days earlier than planned.
Now, you just take a piece of paper towel, swirl it artfully around the drain and plop it in the beige baby bucket that came with your green bin. Voilà.
My “green daughter” and I have been looking forward for months to the dawn of the organic collection program and, yes, we are one of those who were hoarding for the occasion.
Now we can dump all the fat from cleaning the chicken, the silver skin from the pork tenderloin and the dregs of the chicken stock into the bin. The bacon fat, the old yogurt (which acquires the loveliest green tinges in its death throes), the facial tissues and the baked goods that are so far gone they can’t even be rescued for garlic bread, now have an appropriate final resting place.
At the press event before the Apr. 2 launch of the new program, Andrew Pollock of Peel’s public works program said that he didn’t think the “yuck” factor in disposing of organics would deter people from participating.
I’m not so sure, especially for “newbies.” Lakeview resident Brian Hruska explained this morning that he bought the clear compostable plastic bags to line his kitchen bin but finds they leak, creating a stinky mess. His neighbour is dumping cooked rice and eggs straight into his bin and is not pleased with the odoriferous results.
Dave Gordon, manager of waste planning for Peel, says that different people are finding different solutions to the potential mess. Some dump it straight into the small or the large bin with no qualms, although this obviously requires regularly scrubbing. The compostable plastic bags or paper bags work for others.
Lining the bins with newspaper works for us. You can use the tabloid editions of The News for the kitchen bin (the real estate section with all that colour adds a nice touch) and the broadsheet edition for the outside bin. When it’s time to transfer the contents from the kitchen bucket to the bin, just wrap them in a couple of big sheets of newspaper. Seems to soak up the leaky stuff and keep the smell down.
“The majority of people are using some sort of liner,” says Gordon. Visual inspections on the tip floor at the processing plant on Torbram Rd. just south of Highway 407, show compliance so far is good. People are keeping non-compostable plastics, which could really foul up the high-quality compost that Peel is aiming for, out of the mix.
Initial take-up was about 40 per cent of households, but that has already surpassed 50 per cent and may reach the 80 per cent that Peel has targeted in time. “We have 80-90 per cent blue box participation but it took a long time to get there,” says Gordon.
Maybe the best bit of news so far for the program is that it is diverting a lot more material from landfill than originally expected. “We were aiming at 90 kilograms per household per year,” says Gordon, “but the last couple of weeks it’s been running at 110 kgs. per household.”
In a world where every day brings new reports of potential environmental armageddon (yes, it gets tiresome), it still feels good to know you’re pitching in with your 110 kgs. worth.
If you can convince your neighbour(s) to join in, so much the better. You can even hum a little “It Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Pleasure” as you wheel your cart to the curb.
It it to be hoped that will not elicit little “yuck, yuck” sounds from your bin, at least not if you have wrapped your organics appropriately.