Environment minister aiming to keep leftovers from landfills
Chris Ballard announces plans for organic waste diversion
Ontario Environment Minister Chris Ballard says there’s too much value in organic waste to allow it to pile up in landfills.
“Some might say, there’s gold in them there garbage pits,” Ballard quipped Monday.
He was at a FoodRescue.ca symposium at Vineland Estates Winery to announce initiatives to help squeeze the value out of leftovers.
Ballard said a new food and organic waste framework “directs institutions, municipalities and industry about how they need to handle organic waste,” with goals of diverting up to 70 per cent of organic waste from landfills, while also expanding green-bin collection programs and other initiatives.
“There is far too much organic waste going to dumps,” Ballard said. “This is a way that we’re helping … capture that
organic waste and use it in a way that is more productive.”
Organic waste could be used to fuel bio-digesters and the methane gas it produces could be used to generate electricity.
“Toronto is building its third bio-digester in anticipation of this program,” Ballard said.
Meanwhile, he announced a second initiative to prevent leftover food from becoming waste in the first place.
“Before we have to dispose of it, can’t we repurpose it? Can’t we make sure it gets to people in need?” he said.
The province previously provided $600,000 to help Second Harvest — the organization links businesses with surplus food to social service organizations — expand its services through the development of the FoodRescue.ca website, launched through a pilot project in Niagara, Toronto, Kingston and Sudbury. That project is now being expanded across the province with an additional $1 million in funding, included in the 2018 Ontario budget.
“This program will send refrigerated trucks out across Ontario, individuals with refrigerated packs across Ontario, to make sure that as little as possible good food is wasted,” Ballard said.
It’s welcome news to Lori Nikkel, Second Harvest’s director of programs and partnerships, who hopes to rollout the program provincewide by the end of the summer.
“We’re expanding provincewide regardless,” she said, adding the additional $1 million in funding will help support community development that is required to for the project.
Nikkel, however, said the organization will also need much more support and community partnerships before the plan can be realized.