Janine Ralph, Senior Environmental Planning Manager, HDR Consulting

From the Dining Room Table to Finished Compost - Addressing Key Program Components and Issues

Residential organics is the largest portion of the residential waste stream that remains to be addressed in many jurisdictions. How do you design a residential organics program that engages residents and maximizes diversion of materials from disposal? What are some of the options that municipalities can use to control costs, and minimize impacts to overall waste system costs? This webinar walks through the development of residential organics programs based on real-world examples.

This SWANA webinar is based on program development and implementation for municipal jurisdictions in Canada, many of which are on their 'second' evolution of their organics programs. Over time, adjustments have been made to address issues related to material capture rates and program costs, and to account for market fluctuations in processing costs and finished product markets.

This webinar discusses how critical it is to consider: consumer behavior in the household and how people physically manage food and yard organic materials; the need for detailed material audits and assessments of pilot programs in order to develop good material quantity and composition estimates; and options for material collection which can both increase capture rates and control costs. The range of successful (and unsuccessful) approaches for organics processing that have been used for residential organic streams will be discussed, considering the linkage between incoming material composition and quality and the ability to generate a marketable product. The potential to evolve curbside leaf and yard programs to include a spectrum of food waste materials will be discussed as well.

This session will provide participants with a foundation for developing their own residential organics diversion strategy, based on practical and realistic assumptions on program performance and costs.