The new Cochrane Town Council are meeting today to begin debate of the 2018 Draft Budget for the town.

One of the things they'll be talking about is whether or not Cochrane should move to a bi-weekly schedule for waste collection.  Earlier this week at their regular meeting, council was presented with a report from Fabrizio Bertolo, Manager of Waste and Recycling for Cochrane, discussing the possibility of moving to a bi-weekly schedule from the current weekly garbage pick-up.

Council accepted the report as information and are planning to deliberate it with the rest of the budget,   

Bertolo presented bi-weekly waste collection as an option to help Cochrane meet its goal of Zero Waste which was adopted as Cochrane's vision in the fall of 2012.

The framework outlines how Cochrane can achieve Zero Waste by focusing on reducing its environmental footprint by minimizing the amount of waste reaching the landfill through waste reduction, reuse, recycling, redesign, composting and other actions. 

The overall vision of Zero Waste has an interim goal of 80 percent of waste being diverted from the landfill by 2020.   

Bertolo says after the town implemented organics collection in April of 2017 they started looking at what material was still in the garbage collection cart.

"What we found was 47 percent of the material in the black bins are organics and 21 percent is recyclable.  So only 32 percent of the material that is in the black cart is actually garbage."

Bertolo says many residents are using the blue (recycling) and the green (organics) carts properly. 

"Other families are struggling a bit more, families with kids, larger families.  I think it's an educational thing.  They still need to get how the program works.  Maybe for some it could be a little bit of laziness as well.  We know it's tough to change habits when you've done the same thing for decades.  Maybe it just needs a few incentives to do that and that's why we think that going every second week it wouldn't make it that easy just to throw everything in the garbage bin.  It would require, for some families, paying a little bit more attention in doing it."

Bertolo says they also assessed how much of the capacity of the black bins is being used after the implementation of the organics program.

"Actually more than 60 percent of the residents in Cochrane, on a weekly basis, have their black cart less than half full, so over 60 percent will already be good with every second-week garbage collection.  That's why we think we could already go ahead with this program."

One concern is about young families with infants in diapers who might have difficulty with bi-weekly garbage collection since diapers are not compostable or recyclable and have to go to the landfill.  Bertolo says they've thought of those families as well and believe they have come up with a solution.  

"We recommended for those families. if we go with every second-week collection, to adopt a "Care and Compassion" option for families who have two or more children under the age of four in diapers.  They can fill out an application and they would receive excess garbage bags every two weeks and they can place these bags with their extra garbage beside their black cart on collection days so they won't be affected by the change in frequency."

Bertolo believes for all other Cochrane families it will be no problem to go with garbage collection every second week.  "It's just a matter of do we want to do that?  Do we want to change our habits?" he asks. 

Bertolo says if, after budget deliberations, council decides to move forward with bi-weekly collection, their staff is ready to help any family that is finding the schedule to be difficult.  

"We can go out an help them see how much organics is in their garbage and help them to achieve the goal,"

There are also options available for those families who simply won't reduce their garbage enough for bi-weekly collection,  "They can buy excess garbage bags that are available for $3 each or they can acquire an extra garbage bin," explains Bertolo,  

The reason council is discussing this issue during their budget discussions, according to Bertolo, is because of financial implications for weekly and bi-weekly collection.

 "If we decide to keep the collection weekly we would need to increase the cost by $1 per household.  That's because of an increase in our contractual cost.  There are increases for the garbage collection, recycling collection, organics collection and the cost of the landfill,  If we go with every second-week garbage collection we won't need to increase the fees to anybody.  The cost would stay the same."

Bertolo says that some council members are engaging their constituents on social media to get feedback on whether they want to move ahead with bi-weekly waste collection or stay on the weekly schedule.  

With the interim goal of 80 percent diversion of waste from the landfill being just over two years away, you might wonder how we're doing.  Bertolo says actually, Cochrane is doing quite well since organics collection began in April.

"67 percent of waste has been diverted from the landfill.  Even if that data comes from the summertime when there's more yard waste, such as lawn clippings, and the amount is much higher than it would be in the winter, I estimate around 60 percent of waste will have been diverted after the first year,  That leaves just 20 percent more to divert to get to the goal by 2020."