Somewhere out there in beautiful Whistler, there’s a lucky sanitation worker who will get to sort through all the bags of dog poop that end up in the garbage.
What they will be trying to do is divert waste into compost, and to do that they need to separate non-compostable doggy bags, from the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW)-provided compostable doggy bags that end up in the trash in public parks.
The amount collected is a mountain of a problem, according to the RMOW’s manager of resort operations, Derek Jazic.
“In our parks, dog waste in the garbage makes up the largest part of our garbage waste stream by weight and also volume,” he told Whistler's mayor and council at the May 28 meeting as part of an update on his department's summer operations.
“We’ve got a trial with the compost facility in the Callaghan to try and remove that from our waste stream and into the compost stream,” he said.
Jazic explained the trial is pretty hands-on.
“We have what we call a ‘PUP trial’ (Pick Up Protocol) at Alpha Lake Park where a contractor sorts the dog waste in the receptacles to remove non-compostable bags,” he said.
“In parks like Rainbow Park, Meadow Park, [and] Spruce Grove where we’re supplying the compostable bags, we’re encouraging them to go into the compost stream. We’ve been doing this for a little while and we’re waiting to see what the initial results are,” he said.
What’s collected then goes to the RMOW’s waste-transfer facility in the Callaghan Valley where it can be composted to a safe level.
The key barrier, said Jazic, is contamination from the non-compostable bags some people use.
“If we can keep that to a certain degree we’re hopeful that we’ll remove that from the garbage waste steam.”
The trial is something of an expansion of what the RMOW already has in place at Alpha Lake Park, with compostable bags provided, and dog owners encouraged to place collected poop in specific bins for the municipality’s composting stream.
The collection of garbage has come up a few times for the RMOW in recent meetings, with an update to council in April reporting a large amount of waste generated in the community could be diverted into other streams—like compost.
An RMOW communications official explained to Pique by email that by diverting dog waste into the composting steam, it “would help toward our overall waste reduction goal.”
To Jazic’s point that dog waste made up the largest amount of waste in some parks by weight and volume, the official confirmed there’s a lot of shit to deal with.
“The parks waste audit data we have shows that dog waste in parks was 60 per cent of the overall waste weight at Rainbow Park and Alpha Lake Park, which are popular spots for dog owners,” the official said.
The number of dogs present in Whistler is not known, but municipal staff are aware it is significantly higher than the number of mandatory dog licenses sold on an annual basis.
As of June 2024, there is no budget associated with the dog poop compost project, which is described as a small trial.
“If it’s successful—meaning park users do not add plastic waste bags to the bin which would contaminate it—then we will consider next steps," the RMOW said.
“We are hopeful this will be in the case and we will be able to explore other key locations for similar receptacles."
