Norfolk council will be voting next week about supporting a Port Dover pilot project for using green bins.
Elaine Anderson, a member of Greening Our Community, said many of those in the Dover Coast condos where there are 31 homes, have come from larger communities where recycling scraps is common.
“We were shocked to find Norfolk County did not run a green bin program,” Anderson said at this week’s Norfolk County council in committee meeting.
Finding they could not compost in that area, the group investigated setting up an area green bin project but, after encountering prohibitive legislation, it began it’s own green initiative.
They found a local farmer happy to feed kitchen scraps to animals and volunteers who sort kitchen waste into edible and non-edible groups and drop it off to the farm.
“We weighed the waste from Sept. 2020 to October 2021 and in our community alone, we collected just over 10 tonnes of kitchen scraps,” said Anderson.
On behalf of the group, Anderson asked council to assign someone to deal directly with them to help with regulations and government mandates.
“This helps support Norfolk County as Ontario’s ‘green garden’.”
Council agreed to hold any decision based on a notice of motion from Coun. Amy Martin who, next week, will ask council to look at the work that’s been done at Dover Coast as a measurement of how much waste could be diverted in the future.
Martin’s motion includes using the small project as a pilot to gauge the feasibility of a county-wide green bin program.
“We don’t want to stop the momentum,” said Anderson. “We’ve done this since 2019 and have no intention of stopping.”
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