Recycling program on stride for '80/20' goal, says city

The City of Calgary says it has reached a major milestone towards its goal of diverting 80 per cent of household garbage away from landfills and into recycling programs.

Since adopting the blue cart program, Calgarians have recycled more than 200-million kilograms — that's up 70 per cent in the three years the program has been running, said Paula Magdich, who is in charge of recycling for the city.

Magdich said Calgarians are heading towards making "80/20 by 2020" a reality.

"The way we are measuring that goal is we want to reduce the total waste going to our three landfills to 20 per cent by the year 2020," she said.

"We're right around 30 to 33 per cent diversion currently. So, we're on our way but we have some great strides to go."

Magdich said the majority of household garbage is actually made up of food and yard waste, so composting has a huge impact.