Green Bin Pilot Program for Multi-Unit (Apartment and Condominium) Residents
The Green Bin Program allows participants to put organics (fruit and vegetables scraps, paper towels, coffee grinds, etc.) out for separate collection along with garbage and recycling.
Toronto's Green Bin Program has been rolled out city-wide to approximately 510,000 single-family households receiving curbside collection. Programs like this one have enabled the City to reach a diversion rate of 58 percent for single-family households.
Close to half of Toronto residents live in multi-unit dwellings, which are defined as residences with eight or more units receiving garbage and recycling collection from container, compound or pile service. Generally, multi-unit dwellings include apartments, condominiums, and some types of townhouses.
The City has been investigating ways to bring a Green Bin type of program to people living in multi-unit dwellings. Little information exists on organics collection from apartments and condominiums, and the City is not aware of any large North American city undertaking such a project. To gain more information, the City launched an organics collection pilot project involving 30 multi-unit dwellings including apartments, condominiums and coops.
Several methods of collecting organics have been tested. Residents living in participating buildings were provided with an in-home kitchen container and were allowed to use plastic liners, similar to their single-family dwelling counterparts. Once full, residents took their organics to a centrally located bin (either a bulk bin or cart). The buildings were provided with once a week organics collection. Two buildings with three-stream chute sorting systems also participated in the pilot project organics collection.
The pilot project was successful in diverting organic material from the waste stream, and the City plans to implement city-wide organics collection in the multi-residential sector as soon as possible, based on availability of organics processing capacity.
Residents will use in-home kitchen containers to collect their organics, and similar to the pilot, once full, residents will take their organics to thirty-five gallon carts, (the same carts used for commercial organics collection through the Yellow Bag Program), or bulk bins.
Recently, there have been set-backs in the organics processing industry resulting in a delay in processing capacity for all Ontario municipalities, including Toronto. The City plans to start implementing the organics collection program to multi-unit buildings once processing capacity is secured.
