The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Acton/Georgetown, Friday, May 18, 2007 13 GreenCart users want to see program expanded MELANIE HENNESSEY Special to The IFP More than half of the residents currently piloting the Region's GreenCart program think the initiative should be expanded Halton-wide. That was one of the findings of a recently-conducted phone survey on the program that sees residents' kitchen scraps, or organic waste, picked up at the curb in a separate GreenCart for composting-- something the Region says will help increase the life of its landfill. Several Halton Hills homes were part of the pilot project. The complete survey results were presented to the Region's planning and public works committee recently. It showed that 88 per cent of those living in the pilot areas have used the GreenCart at least once and 82 per cent said they are very or somewhat satisfied with the program. And while 89 per cent of the residents deemed the GreenCart to be a positive initiative, only 65 per cent said it should be expanded across the region. Twenty per cent said the program should run in the urban areas only, six per cent said both urban and hamlet area and nine per cent said they don't know. Waste Management Director Rob Rivers also detailed the information staff has gathered about the program over the past year and a half, such as that 324.5 tonnes of organics were diverted from the landfill between October 2005 and September 2006. Despite that, Rivers said the voluntary GreenCart pilot didn't achieve the target waste diversion rates for a region-wide program. "The Halton demonstration results are typical of a source-separated organics demonstration program though," he noted. Halton's goal is to have a 60 per cent waste diversion rate by 2010. That number currently sits at about 43 per cent. He said other municipalities have achieved their diversion targets by implementing a GreenCart-type program in combination with things like garbage bag limits and bi-weekly garbage collection. He also outlined other options that can be used to deal with organic waste, including garborators (in-sink garbage disposals), backyard composting and an energy-from-waste facility. Burlington Councillor John Taylor said he did his own research and found out from City of Edmonton staff that it's using a system known as mixed solid waste, where garbage bags are placed in a large bioreactor and decomposed, resulting in what's known as class B compost-- a quality that doesn't meet Ontario standards. See GREENCART, pg. 14