Why these highrise tower residents were keen to go green

When Margaret Boland moved from her house in Alta Vista into a Riviera condo tower on Riverside Drive in 2019, the lack of waste diversion was one of the first things she noticed.

The Riviera's Classics tower, which opened in 1991, had a recycling room on the ground floor, but everything else was being tossed into the 29-storey building's garbage chute.

"You had people already coming down bringing their recyclables, but not their organic waste. Why not?"  Boland said.

The answer seemed obvious to her: add a couple of green bins in the recycling room and ask residents to drop their organic waste in it.

"The idea that you would throw compostable material down a chute went against every fibre in my body," she said.

Ottawa's waste diversion rate in multi-residential units sits at just 17 per cent — a number the city hopes to boost as it now requires any new residential multi-unit complex (six units or more) to be equipped to handle organic waste.

Complexes like the Riviera that predate June 1 will eventually have to do the same.

Since the addition of compost bins was not yet mandatory, the building's condo board was hesitant and asked for a detailed plan of how it would all work. 

Boland started spreading the word and soon, a small group of residents in the 193-unit tower joined her effort.

Overcoming 'ick factor'

Following meetings and discussions with her condo board, the property manager, and the City of Ottawa, Boland and her team managed to install two large green compost bins in the recycling room in January 2022.

According to Boland, about half of the residents are now routinely participating in the composting program.

"We've had very little opposition," she said.

Leslie Holland, another composting group volunteer at the tower, credits the city's decision in 2019 to allow plastic bags in the organic waste stream as an important factor in the program's uptake. 

"It takes away any real smell and the ick factor," said Holland.

Concerns about odour, rats, and maggots were the main impediments for some residents, but resident Lesley Stewart pointed out the same wet, organic waste was being tossed exclusively in the building's garbage chute for decades, and ending up in the indoor trash compactor.

"It was horrible, it was awful," said Stewart. "The compactor was leaking all over the floor and the smell was just horrendous."

The green bin removes that issue and beyond that immediate benefit, Boland said the environment remains the main motivator.

"We declare emergencies and then we sit on our thumbs," she said. "I think we should all be doing this as part of just our gift to our children and grandchildren."

City eager to help residents

The group of volunteers at the Classics credits staff at the City of Ottawa with helping set up the composting program in their tower.

The job of assisting residents with waste issues in multi-unit complexes falls to Kyle Brydges, a waste management inspector with the city, who credited the group for their enthusiasm.

"They made my job easy because they were willing to take on the challenge," said Brydges.

Brydges says the city provides the green bins, kitchen containers for residents, and will do its best to ensure the bins are collected on the building property, which makes things easier for the property manager.

The city estimates about half of the city's existing 2,100 multi-residential complexes are participating in some form in the organics program, a figure Brydges also credits in large part to the decision to accept plastic bags.