Justine Langevin and her staff at El Taco throw a lot of food, along with disposable dishes and paper, in the garbage.
But now, as part of a new pilot project in Nelson and area, she will be able to use compostable food trays and paper that will instead go into a special bin for organic waste.
"This will decrease our actual garbage profoundly," she says.
The one-year pilot project will see participating Nelson-area businesses separating their food waste from the rest of their garbage and recycling.
It will save them money, because the cost of dropping the organic material at the transfer station will be reduced by 65 per cent below regular waste.
The compostable material will be picked up weekly by a contracted hauler and delivered to the Grohman Narrows transfer station, and then eventually to the composting site at Salmo.
At Grohman, when paying to dump the organic waste, the hauler will get the discount on what is referred to as the tipping fee, and the hauler will pass on the savings to the business customer. This subsidy for compostable waste will be provided by the Regional District of Central Kootenay for a year. It's an experiment to test the mechanics of, and motivation for, getting organics out of business waste.
The usual tipping fee for regular garbage is $166 per tonne, and the subsidy will reduce the fee for compostable waste to $55 per tonne.
The RDCK is running the pilot in partnership with the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce.
Korina Langevin, Justine's sister and the owner of Red Light Ramen, doesn't use disposable dishes but her restaurant does deal with the usual kitchen scraps and uneaten food.
"it would definitely reduce what's going into our waste bins," Korina says, "which would be like a significant cost savings for us by reducing the waste. But also we would be participating in the composting program, which I find very exciting."
El Taco and Red Light are across Victoria Street from one another. They and three neighbours – Thör's Pizza, Ashman's Smash Burgers, and Amanda's Restaurant – already collaborate with joint garbage and recycling bins located in the Red Light parking lot. The Langevins are discussing with those neighbours the likelihood that the collaboration could extend to the organics program.
Commercial potential
The City of Nelson does not pick up waste from businesses as it does from residences. Each business hires a private sector hauler, such as Waste Management or GFL to pick up garbage and recycling and haul it to the Grohman Narrows transfer station. Businesses pay the hauler based on the weight of their waste.
The RDCK's organics co-ordinator Matt Morrison says that according to a 2023 RDCK waste audit, up to 48 per cent of what gets landfilled comes from the industrial, commercial, institutional (i.e. non-residential) sectors. Of that material, roughly between 35 and 40 per cent is compostable.
"So there's a huge diversion potential from the commercial sector," says Morrison, and a big cost savings potential from participating in the pilot.
He cites a grocery store in Fruitvale in a similar program that has saved $4,000 per year in waste hauling costs by separating out its compostable material.
This pilot project comes at a time when the City of Nelson is experimenting with organics collection for residences. The city has given selected residences a FoodCycler that grinds and dehydrates food waste, significantly reducing its weight. That program is still considered a pilot. For rural residents, voters in three nearby areas of the RDCK rejected the introduction of curbside pickup of organics in a referendum in 2024.
Currently there are organics collection facilities at Grohman Narrows and Ootischenia, from the organic waste is transport to the central waste facility in Salmo where it is composted. Creston also has its own composting site.
Rebate
There is an additional incentive included in the program. For the first 25 businesses signed up, the RDCK will grant a $400 rebate. This could be used, Morrison says, to set up the business's bin system at its premises.
Applications to join the program can be sent to organics@rdck.bc.ca. A survey to help the RDCK better understand business waste management issues can be found at https://engage.rdck.ca/ici-organics.
The chamber's business climate advisor Grace Henecka says she was canvassing Nelson businesses about climate-related issues over the past year and the subject of waste management trumped everything else.
"I went around, and I heard it more and more, and then I said, 'OK, we've got to do something about it.'"
Organic waste is both a big-picture climate problem and also a practical business issue at street level, she says.
"We all want to create a more resilient community and that comes down to creating systems that are accessible but also beneficial to our environment and to the whole community."
Landfills, bins, and education
Morrison said, from a waste management point of view, there are three main reasons organic waste should not go in the dump.
The first is the limited capacity of the landfills. The second is that the breakdown of compostable material in landfills produces methane that traps atmospheric heat 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. Landfill emissions account for 23 per cent of Canada's national methane emissions, says Morrison.
"So it's a brutal greenhouse gas," he says. "It really accelerates climate change in the big picture."
A third reason for excluding organic materials from landfills is that moisture-laden food waste produces liquid runoff that requires expensive and complex management.
Henecka and Morrison they are still working on some practical issues in the program, including bins and storage on the business premises. Since each business has different space and access considerations, these solutions have to be flexible.
Morrison says he is working with a professional hauler on two possibilities: a one cubic yard front-loading bin (smaller than the usual dumpster) that is bearproof, or a smaller side-loading tote style bin that would have to be adapted for bear proofing or kept indoors by the business until pickup.
Henecka said staff education will be another aspect of her job: showing workers how and why to separate and store organics. She's found that workers are motivated by the idea.
"A lot of staff are asking for this," says Henecka, who says she has worked in restaurants that would have welcomed it.
"I think it's empowering for a staff member, knowing that they can do something that's beneficial for the environment."
Morrison said many cities have laws against putting food waste in the garbage.
"It's typical and considered best practice, actually, to regulate disposal," he says, adding that waste might eventually be regulated here in the same way.
"We can't afford to landfill organic waste forever, so at some point we will need to regulate this. It would be nice to do that in a collaborative manner, with the buy-in of businesses as much as possible, and have them help inform the policy in a way that works for them."
