City sets out 72 ways to avoid filling up the landfill

The City of Ottawa is proposing a long list of ways to curb waste— from banning some materials from garbage collection to charging residents per bag — in a bid to keep the Trail Road landfill from running out of room.

Staff have been analyzing just how much space the landfill has left and have determined it's reached 70 per cent of its capacity.

That means that if Ottawa keeps producing waste the way it does now, the site will be full in 15 to 17 years.

As things stand, however, projections show that by 2052 Ottawa and its growing population could be generating 37 per cent more waste per year — or 487,000 tonnes annually — than it does now.

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The city released a 465-page document Thursday with a list of 72 options for how to deal with Ottawa's waste over the next 30 years, while reducing and reusing as much as possible.

The options include:

• Banning some materials from the landfill, such as renovation and construction waste.
• Banning green bin organics from the garbage.
• Limiting the number of bins curbside.
• Implementing a "pay as you throw" system that would see fees charged based on what gets set out at the curb.
• Closing garbage chutes in multi-residential buildings.
• Separating mattresses and furniture for better recycling.
• Creating lending libraries and neighbourhood depots for items that can be reused.
• Creating a strategy to reduce food waste.
• Purchasing an existing landfill.
• Developing a new landfill.

Finding a new site for a landfill, staff said, would take 12 to 15 years alone.

"We know nobody wants to have a conversation about a new landfill. That's the last thing we want to consider," said Coun. Scott Moffatt, the chair of the city committee responsible for waste. 

"But in order to keep it at the bottom of the list, we might need to consider some of these other things that might not be as palatable."

When asked what might be the most aggressive option for residents, Moffatt pointed to banning organics from going in the garbage.

Last year, just 58 per cent of households were disposing of their organic waste in the green bin.

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In this second step in creating a new master plan for solid waste, the City of Ottawa wants to set a vision for creating "zero waste," according to the document. It plans to study the long list of options, come up with "aggressive" and "moderate" paths, and present business cases by next spring.

The city is developing its 30-year plan at a time when the regulatory landscape is changing. The provincial government is set to turn responsibility for blue boxes over to waste producers and allow more items to be recycled, while the federal government has pledged to ban single-use plastics and finalize a list of prohibited items by the end of the year.

This latest waste management report goes to the city's standing committee on environmental protection, water and waste management on June 29.