In addition to trash and recycling pickup, Hamilton also implemented an organic waste pickup in 2006, intended to divert compostable organic waste from their rapidly rising landfills into reusable compost. It seems that they were motivated mostly by the lack of space to get rid of garbage, but it's having more diverse and positive results than that, which is cool. It makes sense in that it means (according to Hamilton's statistics, anyway) that up to 40% of residential trash could be diverted to farming or landscaping instead of taking up space with general garbage; it subtracts negative elements and adds positive elements elsewhere, simultaneously.
And seriously, from my perspective, it has literally cut our garbage volume in half. Of course, we're at a particularly frugal phase in life so we're just buying less stuff in general, but still. It takes a fraction more of my time to pay attention to what waste gets thrown in which bin, but it makes a remarkable difference.
The Green Bins take everything from fruit peels and egg shells to meat scraps, wax paper, popcorn bags, those greasy pizza boxes that recycling WON'T take, coffee grounds, dryer lint, and pet hair. What I appreciate is that the City takes a lot of materials that you shouldn't use in your own home composting, like meat scraps, dairy products, and ashes.
Other cities in Ontario have similar programs, as well as parts of New Zealand and the U.K. I'm not sure about the United States, though. Has anyone heard of programs like these in their home towns? I can only imagine the benefits once the initial costs were out of the way- the room saved in landfills, as well as the shared benefits of all that combined compostable material for farms, parks, gardens and yards... such possibilities.
