Re: 15 months until kitchen scrap pickup, (News, Jan. 9).
Saanich apparently expects residents to leave meat scraps isolated and rotting in easily recognized containers for more than two weeks at a time, even in the heat of summer. That idea simply stinks.
Many residents use composters or kitchen sink grinders for food waste, sending ground up kitchen waste into the sewer pipes, not into garbage cans.
In my case the promised 37 per cent waste reduction would be more like five per cent or less, only bones.
I use composters. The rare bit of meat that goes bad before we eat it goes into our kitchen sink grinder, not into the garbage or compost.
So much for the promised 37 per cent saving from every home. Whatever waste saving is achieved will come from Saanich residents who do not use composters or sink grinders.
How were the results of the 583 homes in the 2012 “pilot project” adjusted for composter and grinder use at other homes before arriving at the 37 per cent expected reduction figure?
Are we going to find bylaw inspectors knocking on our doors demanding our kitchen waste or wanting to go through our garbage to verify them as free of vegetable and bakery kitchen waste?
It also poses a risk of encouraging rats, raccoons, mice and stray cats and dogs to become even more of a waste headache than they already are.
How secure and pest resistant will the Saanich scrap containers be? How hard will it be for raccoons or dogs to open them or for rats to chew holes in the walls to get at the meat scraps inside?
Once animals have learned how to get into one of them they will know how to get into the kitchen waste containers at other homes in the same neighborhood.
Won’t processing by an “organics processor” contractor result in the same net generation of carbon dioxide as a landfill?
Turning vegetable waste into soil generates CO2, whether than happens in a backyard composter, at a commercial processor, or in a land fill. There is no point to simply moving methane and CO2 emissions from one place to another.
Kelly Manning
Saanich
