The City of Vancouver offers curbside food scraps collection for single family dwellings but is having a “headache” dealing with multi-unit dwellings, which dominate the downtown peninsula, West End Neighbourhood Food Network (WEFN) spokesman Randy Helten told Business in Vancouver June 7.
Now a new program is opening in the West End to help apartment and condo dwellers to compost their food scraps.
Almost all apartment and condo buildings’ garbage and recyclables are picked up by private contractors. That enables residents to get around city rules that single-family home owners must abide by because the city picks up their recyclables.
For single-family homes, anything that is permissible to put in a blue box is illegal to put in your garbage can. Putting kitchen scraps in the garbage will be illegal by the end of 2012, according to city bylaws, which stipulate various fines.
Until now, the Vancouver Farmers Market by Nelson Park has been the only West End location to accept food scraps, every Saturday in summer months between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Approximately 150 people show up each week to provide the scraps and a donation, Helten said.
Now Helten’s WEFN, in partnership with Recycling Alternative and Village Vancouver, plans to provide a similar service at the West End Community Centre starting June 16.
He last week received a $1,000 grant from the city’s Greenest City Small Grants program – hardly enough to operate the program.
Helten’s venture will be staffed entirely by volunteers and, like the program run by the Vancouver Farmers Market, will rely on the donors of the food scraps to also give a dollar or two to cover costs.
“These are the leading-edge type of people who are the starters in society,” Helten said of those who will pay to give have their food scraps trucked to Delta to be composted.
