Here's what happens to your green bin waste once it leaves your house
Waste from more than 126,000 green bins will go to the Convertus waste treatment facility in south London
Londoners will start using green bins starting Monday when the long-awaited organic food waste pickup program gets underway. So what happens once the 126,000 bins that have been delivered are dumped and taken away?
The trucks will head to Convertus, a waste treatment facility on Wellington Road South that changes organic waste into compost and water vapour.
"The largest contributor to greenhouse gas is methane coming from dairy cows or landfills. Methane coming from landfills is because of food waste, so getting organics out of landfills will minimize greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change," explained Mike Leopold, the company's CEO.
During a tour of the plant that does smell the way you might imagine, Leopold put on a mask and walked through the process of transforming green waste into compost.
How does it happen?
When green bins are brought to the site, waste gets shredded and mixed and put into composting tunnels. It's a two-week process called aerobic composting that uses oxygen.
"Food is made up of 60 per cent water and the rest is solid, so we're making sure the bacteria gets lots of oxygen, which then converts food into water vapour, and solids are converted into compost," Leopold said. "That takes about 14 days."
Employees then screen the residue looking for items like plastics or lids people accidentally threw in the green bins. That's shipped to the landfill.
Other organics that haven't fully broken down over the 14-day process are sent back into the tunnels with new incoming waste, Leopold explained.
What's left is organic compost that will be sent to farms in Middlesex and Lambton Counties, Leopold said, to spread on fields for soil replenishment.
"Normally, farmers would use synthetic chemicals or manufactured fertilizers, but ours is naturally produced through organics," Leopold said.
The company processes about 500,000 tonnes of organic waste a year at its 13 Canadian sites. The City of London is its most recent customer, but municipalities like St. Thomas and Toronto already send waste to its facilities.
London is one of the last municipalities to adopt green bins, but Jay Stanford, the city's director of climate change, environment, and waste, said it has allowed the city to learn what has worked.
He believes the addition will take some time to get used to, but is confident Londoners will quickly learn what can and can't go into the bin.
"Just think of food waste. Anything to do with meat, poultry, seafood all can go in the green bin, and that can include eggshells, bones and shells off of peanuts," he said.
Items like clothing, textiles, pet waste, diapers, yard waste, or anything with plastic cannot go in the bins. As garbage collecting moves to a biweekly cycle, Stanford advises Londoners to check their green bins for new schedules and information on the green bin program.
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With files from Andrew Brown