Stymied, city councilors considered other options including burning, shipping elsewhere and composting. The solution used recycling and composting of residential waste to radically reduce the amount of material that would go into a landfill. Composting facilities in Tennessee, Georgia and in Europe provided guidance on how to do it, but the scale that Edmonton chose was unprecedented. The city accepted a bid by TransAlta Energy that has now diverted 70 per cent of residential waste from landfill. The result is a world-class facility and operation.
Householders place all of their garbage into plastic bags.
The bags are collected and spread out on the sorting floor of a huge building where workers remove plastic material, metal and anything else to be recycled. The contents are then pushed onto a series of separators where non-compostable materials are removed. I expected to be overwhelmed by the smell but to my surprise, was not. Outside, the treated material was covered by a thick layer of tree waste, like bark and sawdust, to remove odours from the compost. Over time, what remains is a rich material ideal for adding to gardens and fields as fertilizer.