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From Wednesday, June 6, 2007 Cape Breton Post

Businesses must separate organics: CBRM

Section: Cape Breton

By Chris Hayes,

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is reminding businesses that organics must be separated from their garbage.

Solid waste manager Donnie Burke said many businesses and facilities are already separating their organics so an ad in Saturday's Cape Breton Post was mostly meant as a reminder to those that aren't on stream.

"The big target right now is the restaurants because there are a lot of them that kind of haven't been doing it yet, so this will be their . . . 20-minute warning or whatever."

Burke said it appears some smaller "mom and pop" grocery stores are also not separating out their organics yet for delivery to the regional municipality's new composting facility.

The ad said that starting July 1, all organic wastes must be separated from regular mixed garbage.

"As of July 1, there should be no more organics," he said. "You are going to get your little residual left but from a Department of Environment perspective and our perspective, everybody has been dully notified and have to comply now."

Burke said some larger supermarket chains have already been separating out organics that were being shipped out before the regional municipality opened its own composting facility this year.

Schools and hospitals were also already separating out organics, he said.

The municipality will probably start rejecting haulers showing up with organics mixed in with the rest of the garbage, requiring it to be sorted before it is returned, he said.

Burke said the municipality has distributed almost 20,000 of the 35,000 green carts that are being distributed to hold household organic waste material. The organics are picked up at the curb and delivered to the municipality's composting facility

The first finished compost will be ready Wednesday, he said.

The municipality also plans an open house Saturday when residents can bag their own compost to take home.

"We are hoping that at least twice a year we will have a public pickup where they can come in and take some home."

The compost will be used in the municipality's parks and hopefully marketed to sites like the Sydney tar ponds or former Devco sites, he said.