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Whistler company going door to door for organic waste, recyclables

While the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and local governments decide how they want to implement centralized composting facilities for the Sea to Sky area, one enterprising Whistler-based company is already going door to door with something that

While the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and local governments decide how they want to implement centralized composting facilities for the Sea to Sky area, one enterprising Whistler-based company is already going door to door with something that’s even better.

Resort Recycling Initiatives (RRI) has been collection organic waste from hotels and restaurants since December of 2000, and on July 1, will expand its operations to include private residences.

"We want to make it as easy and convenient as possible for people to recycle," says RRI owner and operator Clayton Dowling. "About 95 per cent of our household waste can be recycled. If you take out everything that’s organic or recyclable, then all you’re really left with is a few plastic bags and some packaging."

For $35 a month, RRI plans to offer residents and weekenders up to four pickups, collecting all recyclable materials and organic waste. Participants will be given a bucket and a recycling tower to separate their waste, and RRI will swap those for clean buckets and towers when they come to your front door to make each pickup.

The pickup truck will be on call during business hours, and clients can call at any time to arrange a front door pickup that is convenient for them.

"Garbage is hard enough to deal with in Whistler without worrying about separating all of your recycling," says Dowling. "For some people it’s too much work, or too much hassle."

"There’s no door-to-door pickup, and you pretty much have to have a car to get to the dump sites. It takes a minimum of 20 minutes to do a week’s worth of garbage and recycling, and a lot of people who don’t have cars wait until the garbage piles up and call a cab. And if you end up taking a cab, you’re probably not taking the time to separate all your recycling from the garbage."

Backyard composting is currently prohibited by municipal bylaws because of its potential to attract wildlife, such as bears, to residential neighbourhoods.

While the SLRD is committed to centralized composting facilities, they are still in the process of hiring an outside consultant to compare the different options that are available. It will be a minimum of three years before centralized composting gets off the ground in the region.

"Even though this is a good thing for the area, most of the different composting systems that are available can’t handle certain kinds of organic waste, such as meat, bones, oyster shells and other animal byproducts," says Dowling. "The system we use is different in that we can handle anything that’s organic."

Resort Recycling Initiatives has been operating in Whistler since 1998, when the rules regarding bottle return deposits changed. Dowling struck a deal with the majority of restaurants and hotels in Whistler whereby RRI collects and recycles all of their refundable bottles and cans in exchange for half of the proceeds.

When Dowling discovered International Bio-Recovery Corporation – a North Vancouver-based company that has patented a process that turns organic waste into fertilizer in a matter of days – he recognized the potential benefits the IBR process could have for Whistler, for his business, and for his favourite hobby: saving the planet for future generations.

In December of 2000, RRI started to collect organic waste from Whistler’s hotels and restaurants. "Within the first month, I probably had about 30 per cent of them signed up," says Dowling. "Today I have 22 corporate clients and I’m contracted out to collect the waste from 37 different hotels and restaurants, so it’s grown quite a bit."

Some of his customers are stratas, and he handles all the organic waste from two or three different restaurants within the same strata.

RRI’s largest client is the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, and Dowling estimates that they collect about 900 kilograms (2,000 pounds) of organic waste from the Chateau every day.

He charges his corporate customers a fee that is slightly less than the tipping fees at the Whistler landfill, and once a week on average he trucks it to IBR in North Vancouver.

IBR treats the organic waste using a proprietary process that can "digest" organic waste and convert it into high-grade fertilizer in approximately 72 hours – something that would take conventional composters in our part of the world better than 72 days.

Unlike most compost systems, the IBR process can also digest meat and animal products, plus up to 20 per cent non-biodegradable material that would normally wind up in a landfill, such as Styrofoam, glass, fabric and plastics.

It works by Enhanced Autogenous Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion (EATAD), whereby a slurry of organic waste is fed into a digester vessel and fed oxygen. A few years ago, IBR identified the different bacteria that break down organic waste and simulated conditions that help them to grow and multiply within the vessel. These bacteria make short work of the mixture of organic and non-biodegradable materials.

The slurry is then dried, dewatered and eventually pelletized into fertilizer. IBR then adds other organic growing agents in mixtures and markets the finished product to farmers and gardeners as Frenz Earth Friendly Fertilizer.

The concept is that the IBR process returns organic nutrients to the soil that are lost during crop production, reducing farmer’s dependence on chemical fertilizers.

"We benefit the soil by putting the nutrients back in, we benefit and extend the life of the Whistler landfill by diverting a large amount of organic waste, and by reducing the amount of chemicals used in agriculture, we bring fish back to our waterways," says Dowling.

In the past year, since he has started separating his organic waste, Dowling says he has cut down his household garbage output for two residents to just one grocery bag every three weeks or so.

To encourage his customers to do the same, Dowling said his crews will also collect garbage as a courtesy when they make pickups, providing it doesn’t represent more than five per cent of the load. If people take the time to separate their garbage, they can eliminate their need to use the dumping sites altogether.

"After a while you become very conscious of what you’re buying, and how much waste everything represents. You start to look for recyclable packaging, or the product that’s going to create the least amount of garbage," he says. "It becomes a habit after a while."

Dowling believes the people who will benefit most from RRI’s services are the temporary resort employees who don’t have cars and can split the cost, and weekend warriors who don’t want to waste their vacation time at the dump site. Other people may get on board for the convenience, or for environmental reasons.

Even charging $35 a month, Dowling says he will need to sign up dozens of residents just to break even. Based on word of mouth and some rough surveys, however, he expects upwards of a hundred clients within the first few months.

He has already purchased different containers to cut down on the number of trips his trucks will have to make to IBR, and in the future Dowling is looking into the possibility of using electric or hybrid trucks for home pickups in the future to reduce the RRI’s environmental footprint.

"The concerns about transporting the waste are valid but when you compare the benefits to the landfill, of organic continuity, for the fisheries, the benefits outweigh the costs," he says. "There are already tons of trucks on the highway bringing food up to Whistler, we’re just one truck taking the food waste back."

If you are interested in becoming one of those clients or have any questions, you can contact RRI at 906-0078 or ctd@direct.ca .