A new community composting site will give some Toronto residents a slight reprieve from a civic strike that has halted garbage collection for the last two weeks.

Coun. Adam Vaughan, who represents the south end of Toronto's Trinity-Spadina neighbourhood, has set up a composting site at the Scadding Court Community Centre.

The site opens Monday at 10 a.m.

Residents who live in the area are being encouraged to bring their organic waste to the Dundas Street site, which is located just at the corner of Bathurst Street.

Vaughan said the new site will help nourish a community garden.

"This partnership will help us to build our parks and community programming in spite of the strike instead of damaging precious neighbourhood resources," he said in a news release.

The move comes as the city enters the third week of the strike. Over the weekend, the city announced two new temporary dumping sites in a local arena and park. City officials closed down the dumping site at Christie Pits after it was filled to the brim in just a week, much to the dismay of the people living around the park.

Residents are being asked to bring their waste to the Scadding Centre in a reusable and washable container that they can bring back to their home after dropping off their organics collection.

The site will work a little differently than the city's Green Bin program.

The composting site will only accept:

  • fruit and vegetable waste
  • noodles, rice, cereals, breads and grains
  • coffee grounds, tea and egg shells

The following items will not be accepted:

  • scraps from meat or fish
  • dairy products such as cheese or yogurt
  • plastic bags
  • paper products such as napkins
  • bathroom waste including diapers, tissues, hair or sanitary napkins
  • animal waste

The city is asking people who can't dispose of their compost to freeze their waste or to mix it in with the rest of their garbage.

Health concerns

The civic strike, which involves both inside and outside municipal workers, has also affected daycare, summer camps, swimming pools, municipal licensing services and other city services.

However, the strike's impact on garbage collection is what Torontonians have been most vocal about.

City officials are clamping down on people who have been charging residents a fee to haul away their garbage. One group brought about 30 bags of trash to a temporary dumping site at Moss Park after charging residents $10 per bag.

However, they told CTV Toronto that the money was going towards a recognized charity and that they were not informed that they needed special certification to haul garbage away.

Residents have also been complaining about the potent pesticides being sprayed throughout the temporary dumping sites, most of which are located in neighbourhood parks.

A spokesperson for Toronto Public Health told ctvtoronto.ca that they have not received any complaints about people getting sick because of the garbage.

Anne Marie Aikins also said that Public Health has not seen a spike in calls since the strike began.

"It's business as usual," she said.

Although more than half of 2,000 Public Health employees are on strike, Aikins said that officials are still responding to calls from people who have contracted communicable diseases in the same amount of time that they would have responded before the strike.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Reshmi Nair