Calgary restaurants eager to keep food waste out of landfills under new bylaw

The namesake ofNick's Steakhouse in northwest Calgary says composting has barely disrupted theflow atthe long-running business, but it's made a big impact in the amount ofgarbage therestaurant sends to the landfill.

The restaurant founded by Nick Petrosis one of approximately 80,000 businesses and organizations impacted by a new composting bylaw that took effect on Nov. 1.

The bylaw requires businesses to divert food and yard waste from the garbage to be composted;placesignage on containers for garbage, recycling and composting; and provide education for employees.

In 2016, the city estimated that nearly 53,000 metric tonnesof food and yard waste wassent to the landfill from businesses and organizations.

Now that waste will be diverted to private processing facilities that will turn it into organic fertilizers for Canadian farms.

"I think it's very good because we've all got toget smart and think about the environment,"PetrostoldCBCNews.

Lauren Minuk, public program coordinator with waste and recycling services for the city, saidasurvey conductedin the fall found that 58 per cent of businesses were already complying with the bylaw before it was mandatory.

"It's generally been pretty well-received," Minuk said.

"In a lot of cases there's a bit of an adjustment period. It might take people a few weeks to get used to putting their apple core in the compost instead of the garbage, but once they get used to it, it's not a lot of extra effort or extra time."

The program is not only environmentally-friendly, Minuk said, but it's also not expected toimpact restaurants' bottom lines.

"One of the really neat things about this for restaurants and food service businesses is that they have a unique opportunity to keep more material out of the landfill and that may make them more likely to find that the program is cost-neutral because they may be able to decrease the amount of garbage pickups as a result."

The decrease in garbage iscertainly something Petros, and his sous-chefAnthony Lam, have noticed.

"If you put everything in one bin, within two or three days it's full. Now, every three or four days they pick up the garbage, every four or five they pick up the recycling, and for the food [waste], they come once a week. So ithelps to keep the environment clean," Petrossaid.

Dramatic increase in demand

BluPlanetRecycling is one of the private companies that's providing green bin pickup services for organizations.

"Every day we're fully booked now,...so we haven't really hit a lull yet," said Nelson Berlin, business development manager at BluPlanet, in an interview with CBC News.

Berlin said his company has had to significantly increase the number of staff and vehicles to keep up with the demand.

He said the biggest success has been with restaurants, with somefilling up as many as 16 green bins per week.

"There's always people who are resistant, but we're so busy with people who are excited and positive about the program that we haven't really heard anything from that side," he said.

"Removing compost from the landfills is the most significant thing we can do to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions coming from our landfills. If you're not doing that, then you're not contributing to that collaborative effort to reduce those emissions."

• Compost police? Calgary spot checks green bins

The city is focusing on an education-first system, and will rely on 311 complaints to identify organizations that aren't complying with the bylaw.

Organizations that don't comply could be fined$250.

People interested in learning more about the programcan visit the city's website.

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