Sites still being evaluated for Regina composting facility

The company in charge of the City of Regina’s food and yard waste program, also known as the composting program, still doesn’t have a site finalized for its permanent processing facility.

Six months ago the RM of Edenwold voted down a proposed location for the facility near Pilot Butte after an outcry from the community.
At this point, EverGen – the company that’s been contracted to run the composting facility – is just at the evaluation stage for a new site, this one adjacent to the city’s landfill.

“Making sure it’s a suitable site in terms of everything from technical feasibility and discussions with key stakeholders – neighbours, etc,” said Jamie Betts, the Chief Operating Officer for EverGen.

The new site is on the City of Regina property and the land would stay with the city if the facility is built there.

When the facility near Pilot Butte was being discussed last summer, many had asked why it couldn’t be built next to the Regina landfill instead.
Betts said it wasn’t the first choice because EverGen was looking for a site it was going to be able to own and operate for the long haul and be able to take organic waste from other sources, not just the city’s program.

“We were looking at growing our business and helping the City of Regina and the community implement a responsible organic waste management program,” he explained.

Though, Betts said the site the company is looking at now won’t stop it from taking waste from other sources.
Betts couldn’t say how long it might take to go through the evaluation process and get going on a facility – he said it could be anywhere from weeks to a few months, but not extending out to years.

“We’d like to move to a permanent site and I think the city would like that as well, as quickly as we can,” he said.

The City of Regina has been running its curbside food and yard waste pickup program for about nine months without a permanent processing site. But Janet Aird, the city’s manager of program development and delivery, and waterworks and environment, said the city is helping out but it’s ultimately up to EverGen to find its new site.

“Our main focus is ensuring the material is being composted and it is being successfully composted at the temporary site right now and it will continue being processed there until that permanent site can be located,” said Aird.

Waste from the pilot project was processed at the city’s landfill and the waste from the city-wide program is also being processed there.
Aird said about 9,500 tonnes of waste have been processed so far and it’s expected to be near the initial estimate of 24,000 tonnes for the year. Betts said EverGen doesn’t have any concerns about space at the current temporary processing site.

From the city’s perspective, Aird said the composting program is going well.
“We know there’s still a certain amount of material that’s going into the garbage, so ongoing education will help people keep sorting the right stuff,” she said.

Betts said he would still refer to it as a semi-pilot project because people are still getting used to it—the biggest problem is people bagging their waste.

“In an ideal world, we would just put our food waste into the bins, and we wouldn’t put any non-organic waste into the bin. We like to dump our waste into bags and then put it into the bins, ideally, we’d just put pure waste into the bins,” he explained.

Betts said even compostable bags cause problems in processing.