Manitoba has so far lagged behind the rest of the country when it comes to composting.  According to Statistics Canada, only Newfoundland and Labrador does worse than we do.   Like a lot of environmental problems, the problem is partly cultural, we need to change people’s mindset about what constitutes waste.  On the other hand, we lack the basic infrastructure that makes it easy to participate in reducing our ecological impact.

Toronto has had curbside pickup of yard waste for a few years now and their program has been a national success.  Now Vancouver is planning on getting involved as well.  But it’s not just the big cities.  Over a dozen municipalities across Quebec have pick up programs, and Whitehorse has reduced the amount of organic waste going to landfills by 31% since 2005. While Winnipeg has its “Leaf it” program, and some private companies are stepping forward to fill the void left by the lack of municipal pick up, Manitoba as a whole is continuing to put far too much of its organic waste into landfills. 

A new tool from Environment Canada makes the logic of curbside yard waste pick up even easier to understand. Their Greenhouse Gas Calculator for Waste Management is now available and allows users to calculate the greenhouse gas savings of various waste management strategies.  Of course there are many assumptions built into any calculator, but by one calculation I put through, if Manitoba could increase its diversion of compostables to match the level of provinces like Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, we could save over 16 thousand tonnes of greenhouse gases every year.  That’s the equivalent of taking over 3500 cars of our roads.