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Editorial: Compost closer to home

Turning kitchen scraps into compost will extend the life of the Hartland Landfill and is healthy for the environment, but reaching that goal is becoming difficult and expensive.

Turning kitchen scraps into compost will extend the life of the Hartland Landfill and is healthy for the environment, but reaching that goal is becoming difficult and expensive.

The price went up again this week, when the Capital Regional District’s environmental services committee learned that it received only one bid for collecting and hauling the scraps — for $121,000 more than it budgeted.

The committee had little choice other than to recommend awarding D.L. Bins the three-year contract at a rate of $143.73 a tonne for about 6,500 tonnes a year at an estimated annual cost of $934,245. The extra cost would be covered by other landfill fees.

This all looked much easier in 2012, when the CRD decided to ban scraps from the landfill in 2015, and contracted with Foundation Organics to compost the waste in Central Saanich. Then, Foundation lost its licence because neighbours were nauseated by the smells.

Since 2016, D.L. Bins has been trucking some of the scraps to Delta and the rest to Fisher Road Recycling in Cobble Hill. It takes care of the scraps for now, but it’s an interim measure, and the contract has no minimum, so the CRD is free to find another facility.

“We’ve got clear direction now to our staff to get a kitchen-scraps processing facility up and running or find an alternative on the Island,” said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps.

Any time the CRD talks about building something, even brave hearts tremble, but we need a kitchen-scraps facility closer to our kitchens.