There were a few phone calls and even more stares last week as a consulting firm collected trash at 100 homes in Chatham-Kent.
It was actually the fourth time in a year AET personnel were out snagging bags of trash and emptying curbside recycling containers.
Rick Kucera, manager of waste and recycling for the municipality, said the collections were part of a yearlong audit, one sanctioned by Waste Diversion Ontario.
“They approached blue box communities to gather data to understand what is going into our garbage,” he said. “When they approached me and said it was 100-per-cent funded, I said, ‘Where do I sign up?’”
For two-week stretches in each of the four seasons, AET personnel gathered curbside garbage and recycling from a stretch of 10 homes in 10 neighbourhoods in Chatham-Kent.
“They ideally wanted to do properties that had garbage and recycling on the same day. We were able to achieve that,” Kucera said. “We selected groups of 10 in Chatham, the Chatham fringes, Wallaceburg and Blenheim.”
AET’s crews took the trash and recycling to the Harwich transfer station, sorting it “literally piece by piece, hand by hand.”
Kucera said the AET personnel go through the waste and categorize it. He stressed there is complete confidentiality.
“They don’t read any information in the trash; they just want to see what’s in it,” he said. “They’ll be able to tell us the practices of local residents based on the sample. They’ll ultimately produce a report for each community involved.”
Kucera said the program is at the forefront of waste management research in the province. It has never been done in Chatham-Kent before, one of the reasons he was interested in taking part.
“We’re trying to understand what percentage of materials, by recycling or garbage, are going out weekly or biweekly. We can determine what is being landfilled compared to what can come out and be composted in the backyard,” he said.
Kucera said the information will be quite useful in the future.
“I feel, going forward, we’re in a good place right now, but if we ever want to look at any changes, it will be essential to have numbers to support the changes,” he said.
Details from the audit should be available to the municipality in the fall, Kucera added.
“It takes quite a while to compile the data,” he said.
