“We’re accepting anything that would come out of your garden; no kitchen waste, no kitchen scraps at all,” explains NEAT’s program coordinator Karen Mason-Bennett.
She says residents who participate are asked to put their waste in large, paper yard waste bags or large plastic buckets – but absolutely no plastic garbage bags.
Mason-Bennett says the event, held three times every year, is coordinated to offset yard waste being sent to landfills.
“We’ve had a lot of people asking for it, they understand that it’s not great to put this material in the landfill because it does increase the production of methane, and there are a couple other issues with adding organics to a landfill system,” explains Mason-Bennett. “So that’s one of the reasons that we’re hosting this, and it will just kind of continue to be a bridge until we have a larger, formulized program.”
This is also essentially one of the only opportunities to properly dispose large amounts of yard waste, as the city’s compost space is not publicly accessible.
“If people have like smaller amounts of things, grass clippings and that type, the community garden will take them throughout the summer but it just can’t handle the volumes that we typically see at these events,” says Mason-Bennett.
The community garden compost bins can be found along its fence, according to Mason-Bennett.
The Yard Waste Collection Day takes place in the North Peace Leisure Pool’s parking lot, located off 100 Street, on May 2, 2015 – 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
The next collection day typically occurs at the end of the summer, sometime in August, according to Mason-Bennett.
