A Walk in the Park by Kit Nash

I am lucky enough to live near one of Edmonton’s amazing community gardens. The Peace Garden Park is located on 120^th Street and 103^rd Avenue in Oliver. It is an oasis of green in a neighbourhood of high-density living.

I wandered over to talk to some gardeners about the garden and about the compost facilities. As you can see from the picture, the compost bin is near overflowing. It’s great that it’s getting used, but some gardeners, like Clayton and his dog Yakul, don’t know much about it.

Getting information out to gardeners is one of the challenges of any community project. Here, however, there are other challenges. Any compost bin needs to balance the greens with some browns. One of the gardeners, Sandra Anderson (and her dog, Susie) said that this compost bin was mostly greens due to all the weeding. So the compost does smell a little. Also, the water supply at the garden is intermittent. Unfortunately, the pump is currently broken. Gardeners make other arrangements to keep the compost at optimum moisture.

Overall though, the garden looks great, and it’s wonderful to see composting at Peace Garden Park. Compost happens! And the garden loves it!

If you helped with composting at a community garden, how did you solve challenges? What helps to communicate with gardeners?

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Kit Nash graduated from the Master Composter Recycler Program in 2011. 

Pit Stops: John Janzen Nature Centre CT

Reblogged from The Dusty Musette

Tucked away in a western cranny of Edmonton’s river valley, between Fort Edmonton Park and the John Janzen Nature Centre, stands a marvel of elegant, simple, sanitary-engineering  design. It’s a composting toilet (CT), made by Advanced Composting Systems of Whitefish, Montana, and it’s situated in a small raised structure next to a cycling path. The staff of the Nature Centre look after it, and they keep it remarkably clean and well stocked; I’ve used it many times and never been caught wanting for supplies. Sometimes there’s even actual Purell in the hand-cleaner dispenser.

My guess is that the Nature Centre folks see the CT as a kind of environmental PR project, promoting the possibilities of composting. (There is, in fact, a Compost Education Centre at the Nature Centre across the trail). So I suspect there’s a kind of pride factor that helps explain the pristine condition of this craphouse. A sign inside explains how the toilet works—making vague reference to mysterious “organisms” that live down below and go to town on the unsavoury deposits in such a way that renders said deposits benign, odorless, heck, even beneficial. The sign refers to the end-product as “a rich, well-stablilized mulch.” And here’s the amazing thing: the place is completely odorless. A quick glance down the hole would make you think that’s impossible, but I’m here to testify that the place absolutely does not smell in any way toilet-y. Actually, it smells kind of peaty, in a subtle, earthy way, like a fine single malt Scotch.

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Trash to treasure: Edmonton’s first Eco Station Reuse Area Opens

 The City of Edmonton celebrated the opening of its first Reuse Area, located at Ambleside Eco Station (14710 Ellerslie Road) on Friday, June 22. The Reuse Area gives residents the chance to reuse large items such as sofas, chairs and other household items brought to Eco Stations.

“There was so much energy on opening day that items were literally flying out the doors,” shared Eco Station Supervisor Tony Colangelo. “One person’s trash is really another person’s treasure and the Reuse Area is like a great big treasure chest as you’ll never know what you will find.”

“By continuing to use items that are in good condition, we’re all helping to keep waste out of landfill,” said Councillor Bryan Anderson. “The Reuse Area contributes to our leadership in waste management and supports The Way We Green, the City’s vision for an environmentally sustainable city.”

“The Eco Stations offer a convenient one-stop location for all types of household waste,” said Trent Tompkins, director of Collection Services with Waste Management Services. “Residents often bring a mix of material, and I’m very pleased that this initiative enables us to set aside those items that can be reused and really shouldn’t go to landfill.”

Since opening the Reuse Centre has seen lots of action. On Thursday, June 28 it was the location of MEAET 3.0, a microfunding projects organizing by volunteers of Edmonton's NextGen.

The two events each drew about 100 citizens to the new facility. Come visit the Ambleside Reuse Area for yourself!

The Cyle of Recycle

I personally love learning the ins and outs of recycling. Ninety per cent of the material we collect in our recycling system is sold to market , including  many local companies . Here are some of our local buyers of household recyclables:

• Allied Paper Savers purchase our mixed paper and newspaper.
• Newspaper is made into insulation sold by Can-Cell Industries.
• Alta Steel buys our tin cans. The metal is melted down and used to make grader blades and rebar.
• Greys Recycling Industries Inc. is currently stockpiling our glass to be made into such things as interlocking sidewalk blocks. The company will also  soon  recycl e  clothing collected from Recycling Depots into paper.  
• EMCO Building Products purchases our mixed paper and forwards it on to another company that turns it into asphalt shingles.

Material is also sent to markets outside of Edmonton. Newsprint, for example, is turned into new newsprint at mills in the Pacific Northwest and most plastic goes to Merlin Plastics in Burnaby BC for processing.  Edmonton.ca/waste has a good breakdown of what happens to our recyclables, including material taken to Eco Stations and the EWMC. If you keep your eyes peeled you can see recycled products everywhere. For example I noticed these barriers at a campground last weekend.

We can all consider waste when we make decisions at the store. Try to purchase items with minimal packaging that can be reused or recycled and consider companies that use recyclables in their products. That helps to close the recycling loop. 

If you’re interested in becoming an expert on how a specific material is recycled and writing a blog sharing your knowledge please sign up for Article Writer - Waste on www.myvolunteerpage.com and we will send you an assignment.

Say good-bye to bad smells; WMS makes things right at the centre

This article was published in the Edmonton Examiner on May 16. It does a great job outlining actions taken to address odours from the EWMC.

Authour: Ed Gibbons, City Councillor, Ward 4 

Last summer I heard from a number of my constituents concerned about the smell coming from the Edmonton Waste Management Centre (EWMC). In response to these concerns, Waste Management Services has taken some immediate action while continuing to develop a long-term strategy to reduce and control odour emissions at the EWMC. Some of these initiatives include: 

• The Edmonton Composting Facility is fully enclosed and has a biofilter system to remove odours before they're released to the air. Door and window seals have been replaced and major improvements have been made to the aeration floors and biofilter system. 
• An odour misting system is in operation in key areas of the Integrated Processing and Transfer Facility and the Edmonton Composting Facility. This misting system sprays an organic compound that neutralizes the odours. 
• Several operations, including compost turning, are restricted when the potential for odours is high. 

Last fall, Waste Management Services also hired an odour expert to conduct a preliminary assessment of odour emissions and their control at the EWMC. The next step is a complete inventory of all odour sources, including the waste processing facilities and the bio-solids lagoons. The city's goal is to reduce the odours as much as possible. 

A community liaison committee has been created to share information with the community on the odour management activities.

As always you can contact me at (780) 496-8138 or ed.gibbons@edmonton.ca