Trash ‘detectives’ coming to a garbage bin near you, Lindsey Wiebe

OVER the next two weeks, a team of trash detectives will covertly collect and sift through the garbage bags and recycling bins of a hundred Winnipeggers.
 
There’s no police sting or CSI-style investigation underway, but the information gleaned from each miniscule scrap of waste will help the paper and packaging industry figure out how much waste is getting recycled and how much trash Manitobans generate in the first place.
 
“A waste audit will tell you how much of each material is going out in the market in any given year,” said Earthbound Environmental owner Ken Friesen, whose company is running waste audits for a number of communities.
 
Municipalities in the province haven’t had their trash audited since 2000, which means knowledge of what Manitobans throw away is nearly a decade old.
 
The recent auditing effort is part of the province’s new Packaging and Printed Paper Stewardship Regulation, registered in December and aimed at improving recycling in Manitoba.
 
The audit is headed up by Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba, a newly created, industry-funded group that has until June to develop a new plan for recycling services for Conservation Minister Stan Struthers.
 
Auditing crews will collect garbage and recycling from 100 homes in Brandon this week and another 100 in Winnipeg next week, putting trash into 65 categories and analyzing it in five-gram increments, said Friesen. An audit in Portage la Prairie is underway, and depending on the budget, more rural communities might be audited. Audits are typically done multiple times in different seasons.
 
Homes are chosen based on income levels, and include single-family households, a seniors’ complex, a lower-income housing block and a condo-style highrise with higher-income residents.
 
People aren’t notified in advance, said Friesen, because auditors don’t want them to suddenly become recycling angels for the study.
 
“We just want people to behave the way they would normally behave,” he said.
 
The $150,000 audit is covered in equal parts by the province, the Manitoba Product Stewardship Corp., and Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba. Results should be in by April.
 
lindsey.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca

Recovering the recyclables

The rate of recovery of materials like aluminum, paper, corrugated cardboard and plastic across Manitoba, according to three waste audits:

• 1996 — 39 per cent (24 kilograms per person)
• 1998 — 41 per cent (26 kg)
• 2000 — 45 per cent (31 kg)