Saskatoon continues to rank low among Canadian cities for waste diversion

A new report from the City of Saskatoon says the bridge city continues to rank among the lowest in the country when it comes to finding another home for its garbage outside of the landfill.

The report, which will be presented to councillors on Monday, said Saskatoon's waste diversion rate last year sat at 24.3 per cent. The national average sits at 45 per cent for Canadian cities.

It's a slight increase from 2018, where Saskatoon diverted 22.8 per cent of its garbage through recycling and composting programs.

However, the city is still continuing its goal of 70 per cent waste diversion by 2023, an admittedly difficult target to meet.

"It's a big jump between 24.3 per cent and 70 per cent," admitted Jeanna South, director of sustainability for the city.

"There's a little bit of a margin of error which we calculate our diversion rate in a slightly different way [than other cities]. So, we get a little bit of credit."

However, South said the city is banking on three large initiatives to increase that number. 

One program that was approved earlier this year requires all businesses and organizations in the city to have a separate container for recycling, as well as another container for organic waste.

The business recycling program will start in mid-2021, and will begin to be enforced in 2022. The composting program bins will arrive in 2022 and will be enforced by mid-2023.

Another large program coming to Saskatoon is the construction of Recovery Park, a site near the entrance of the landfill that will allow people to drop off construction and demolition waste, hazardous waste and elm wood to be recycled.

Construction on the project is expected to start later this year and will take two years to complete.

Finally, the city's curbside composting program is expected to roll out in 2023. Last year, council agreed to fund the program, allocating one per cent of city taxes to the program in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

South said initiatives like these have worked in other cities.

"We've seen a lot of work in Calgary with their own recovery park type structures," she said. 

"Any city has a slightly different attitude toward new programs that we have coming online, whether it be curbside organics or institutional/commercial."

Recycling problems

Meanwhile, the city remains concerned about its recycling contamination rate, which sat at 10 per cent in 2019. Most contaminated items end up in the landfill.

Worse, Saskatoon's multi-unit recycling program's contamination rate sat at 20 per cent.

"We have an ever-evolving education and engagement and enforcement program that we apply to continue to monitor and hopefully improve contamination," said South.

"We continue to take a lot of waste-related calls and we also have the environmental protection officers so they deliver education and warning notices."