Green bins coming to all Edmonton homes starting next July

July to bring city-wide green bin rollout In a matter of months, Edmontonians will be asked to do more with their garbage. CTV Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson has the details.

Edmonton — The green bin composting program will start rolling out city-wide by next July.

A pilot version of the composting program was launched in 13 neighbourhoods earlier this year. The city also announced in September that a new waste collection system was in the works, but a timeline to have the green bins in every household had not been revealed.

"I know that my dad’s a little harder to convince than my mom, and so it's definitely person dependant," Delwood resident Jasey Hook told CTV News Edmonton. Her family has been using the new green bins since April.

"We’ve always done recycle, so that part's easy. [It] just takes another step to clear your plate into the green bin versus putting it into your regular garbage."

The City’s composting facility was shut down in May when a weak roof caused structural safety concerns. The vast majority of Edmonton’s waste has been going directly to the landfill since.

Mike Labrecque, Waste Services Branch Manager with the City of Edmonton, says organics being sorted for the pilot project will be composted.

"Anything on the curb side, the demonstration area, those 8,000 homes, we have composting capacity in the waste management facility that we can use for that."

The City will also be bringing an anaerobic digester online early in the New Year to process organic waste.

The digestor will be crucial to the program once 250,000 more Edmonton households receive their bins starting next summer. The full rollout is expected to take about one year.

"... the anaerobic digester and what we have at the yard can handle probably 50 to 55,000 tons,” Labrecque said. "It’s getting into 2025 where it becomes a bit of a problem."

The city has plans to build a new composting facility, that is scheduled to be completed in 2025.

In addition to the green bins, the city will also be launching new garbage and recycle bins in an effort to divert single-use residential waste from the landfill.

Friday, City Council’s Utility Committee approved 2.5 per cent rate increases for the next three  years, in order to help pay for the new system.