The Town of Olds is increasing efforts to educate residents on how to get the most use out of their green compost bin, through an advertising campaign.
“When we look at green compost and organic bins we traditionally think of grass clippings and some minor stuff like that.
“Hopefully with this campaign it will show there’s a whole lot more we should be putting in the compost bin as well as some stuff in the recycling bin,” said Scott Chant, the town's chief operating officer. See pages 8 and 9 for more information on the campaign.
The town has had success in the past with encouraging residents to partake in proper waste disposal practices.
“A number of years ago we put in a pilot program of a blue recycling bin and that was successful and we went to a full town-wide blue bin program,” Chant recalls.
In April of 2014, platoons of volunteers deployed between 2,300 and 2,500 blue recycling bins to homes throughout Olds.
The rollout followed a pilot project that began in the fall of 2012 involving 800 bins that were delivered to homes in the north and west parts of town.
The project was meant to determine if home-based recycling bins would divert waste from landfills and to see how residents responded to the service.
Studies organized by the town indicated the pilot project diverted 43.9 metric tonnes of material from the landfill in the first quarter of 2013.
Once the blue bin program went community-wide, collection of recycling, compost and garbage bins went to a three-week pickup rotation.
When speaking to the process the town went through in getting residents to use the blue bin effectively Chant called it a tremendous and easy transition.
He feels it was a simple transition because of the depots that were in Olds prior to the blue bins.
“We had recycling depot points in town for a lot of years, we’ve just put different bins in there and made them larger.
“I’ve been here 13 years and we had them in place long before that. So encouraging residents to do it curbside was a very easy transition.”
Chant says that residents should take pride in how well they properly dispose of their waste.
There have been many benefits to having the residents properly disposing of their waste, he said, pointing to cost savings with the reduction in the number of waste trucks required.
Alternatively, he said there have been some issues such as odour coming from the black bins in the summer months but this could be resolved by using green bins more effectively.
“When you get to July and August the black bins can get a little smelly,” said Chant. “Even on a two week rotation it gets to be smelly, but the biggest piece is that we aren’t using our compost bins as good as we should.”
