A full ban on kitchen scraps is now in effect at Hartland landfill, which means Saanich municipal workers and private company haulers will be fined heavily if organic waste is discovered in dumped waste.
In April 2012, the Capital Regional District board voted to implement a region-wide kitchen scraps strategy. Kitchen scraps include meat, bones, grains, dairy products, eggs, vegetables, fruits and soiled paper products.
While Saanich was one of the first municipalities to roll out the blue box recycling program, which started in Gordon Head in 1989, it was one of the slowest to deviate organic waste from its garbage, starting in early 2014.
Current recycling and composting programs divert 46 per cent of the waste stream from Hartland. The belief is that organic materials, such as kitchen scraps, still remove an additional 30 per cent of waste at Hartland. But the issue of where to process all that organic waste is still in disarray. The CRD is now in the process of sourcing a contract for a kitchen scraps processing facility in, or within proximity of, the Capital Region.
No site has yet been selected, but the construction completion date of a processing facility could take up to two years. Until that time, kitchen scraps will continue to be trucked up-Island and barged to the Lower Mainland.