City celebrates Curbside Organics Program milestone

Lethbridge celebrated a milestone Monday. It’s been six months since green carts were rolled out to residents across the city and 4,000 tonnes of organic waste has been diverted from landfills thanks to the Green Cart Collection program. James Nicholls, Waste and Environment Collections Manager for the city, explains some of the changes they are exploring as the program evolves.   

“So we’re always looking at ways that we can improve the program. One of the biggest things that we’re going to be focusing on in the next little while is food waste diversion. So while the yard waste component, that’s something that a lot of people bought into immediately, we know that there’s still future diversion opportunities for food waste. So really getting those food scraps, those items that people may still be scraping into their garbage at the end of end of a meal, throwing away items from the fridge if they’ve unfortunately lost them after a little bit of breakdown, those are the items that we really want to see. Getting into the green cart, we know there’s a lot more opportunity. So education and outreach is where we’re focused now.”

City officials say around 85 per cent of residents in Lethbridge are currently participating in curbside organics program.