Winnipeggers begin rolling out green carts as city launches food waste pilot project

Close to 4,000 Winnipeg households will begin taking their compost to the curb along with their garbage and recycling, as the City of Winnipeg launches its two-year residential food waste collection pilot on Monday.

The project is being rolled out in the neighbourhoods of Daniel McIntyre, Inkster Gardens, Linden Woods, Linden Ridge, Mission Gardens and St. George. It will run until September 2022, with a report to city council due in 2023.

The pre-selected, single-family homes will each get one 120-litre green cart, one seven-litre kitchen pail for collecting food waste, samples of compostable liner bags as well as informational material showing how to compost and what items are acceptable.

The city will collect the organic waste on the same day it collects garbage and recycling. It will be composted at the Brady Road Resource Management Facility. 

The city has instructional videos and photos available on its website. 

An organic waste pick-up program has been a long time coming to Winnipeg, which is one of the last larger Canadian cities to collect organic waste from residential homes. Halifax, for example, has been collecting organics since 1998.

City council originally approved an organic waste collection pilot project in 2011. It was initially slated to start in 2014, but was put off several times.

The city hopes the program will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the Brady Landfill.