All residential garbage indeed goes through the composting facility. Again, a combination of manual sorting, and screening is used to remove items that are not compostable. Yes, there are people that first go through the garbage to remove things like lawn chairs, beer coolers, couch cushions, etc. After that large rotating, trommel screens are used to separate the non-compostable items from the organic fraction, which luckily tend to be of smaller particle size. Of course, some contaminants (i.e. plastics and glass) will remain with the organics during the composting process, however the finished compost product will get screened once or twice more to remove whatever wasn’t removed prior to the composting. (This is just a simplied explanation, if you go to the Open House, then you will get to see all the steps in the process).

Ultimately, the compost could still have very tiny pieces of plastic and glass in it, but this will not affect its efficacy as a soil amendment.

Lastly, people SHOULD NOT throw their recyclables into the garbage. Other than very large cardboard boxes or metal cans, recyclables can not be very effectively/efficiently extracted out of the garbage process stream, and they get too dirty when they’re mixed in with the garbage.

Jenny

I am an avid recycler and Eco-Station user. I do find Edmonton’s approach to recycling very different from what I’m used to, being originally from Vancouver – where the resident is supposed to think about exact types of plastic (for example) before deciding to put that container in the recycling bin or not.

I always thought that Edmonton’s more laissez-faire approach to using ‘your judgment’ when recycling was susceptible to people overloading it by attempting to recycle wrong types of things. But.. perhaps it’s more fault tolerant than I assumed.

Will definitely check out the open house.