Photo credit: www.gorbould.com “So, do you compost?” I asked as I was visiting my future apartment building in Gatineau. “LOL. Can you imagine how much trouble that would give me? And the complaints about the smell? No. We don’t compost here.” Said the facility’s manager minutes before I signed a one-year lease with him. Great. Now I’m going to have to either carry my compost all the way back to campus for a 45 minute walk every morning OR walk the streets at night in my shady neighborhood looking for a compost bin to take my kitchen leftovers. Did you know that 80% of your waste is either recyclable or compostable? My family of 4 sends 1 single half-filled garbage bag to the curb every week along with 2 bins of recyclables and a big green bin of compost. It bothers me tremendously that cities have yet to figure out a way to normalize and facilitate composting practices in multi-level buildings. Let’s face it. Building owners might never make the effort until given a...

So uOttawa might have won the race against the City of Ottawa in getting a mechanical composter, but it’s quite a relief that the City is diverting waste. As most of you are aware, thanks to an impressive marketing campaign, the Ottawa Green Bin program is here! It will be collecting organic waste once every two weeks during the winter Throughout spring, summer and fall, it will be collected weekly. To know when you should put your green bin to the curb, view the collection calendar to keep track of pick up dates. Like me, you might not have received your bin. This might be because the first phase of the program only delivered to single residential properties, low-rise multi-unit residential properties with six units or less and rural village residents with curbside pick up. Here are the following distribution dates: Phase 1b : The remaining multi-unit housing with curbside collection will receive their green bins and begin participating in the program before September of 2010. Phas...