FAQs

First, thank-you for participating in the pilot. 

Your organics collection service stops on Thursday, February 1 and the City will begin picking up the 240L carts and replacing it with a new 120L cart.  

During the transition period between Tuesday, February 20 and Friday, March 15 there will be no organics curbside collection. All residents will need to self-haul organic waste to a depot. 

Please check the collection schedule to prepare for the first organics collection day in your area.

Please, do not put your organics cart at the curb until your first collection day. If you do, it won't be collected. 

  Your cart will come to you!

  We'll start delivering the green coloured 120L carts to each registered address from Tuesday, February 20, 2024.

  Please DO NOT put your organics cart at the curb until your first collection day. If you do, it won't be collected.

  Please note: The carts are owned by the City of Powell River and stay with the property.

There is only one size and it's the same as your grey garbage cart - 120 litres. 

We did a lot of research on this, including an extensive survey conducted in 2020, and found that a 120L cart was the one size that fits most. 

The survey asked: On average, would you have enough organics and yard waste in a week to fill: A grocery bag? A black garbage bag? A shopping cart?

Of the 1,227 respondents:

• 51.8% answered a black garbage bag 
• 37% answered a grocery bag
• 11.2% answered a shopping cart

Your cart is not lockable, bear resistant or bear proof, no cart is, but there are ways to keep them and other wildlife out of your garbage.  

Human food, pet food, garbage and other organic materials are like a dinner bell for bears. 

You can help reduce wildlife conflict by, first, getting your cart to the curb at the right time of day. If it's left out overnight, you'll likely wake up to a mess on your street and the ire of your neighbours!

Keep it clean! Rinse your cart between collection days, Once in a while, clean with warm water and vinegar solution.    

Other ways to keep bears away:

• Scheduling will help. Having organics collected weekly keeps the waste from sitting too long and getting stinky. 
• Freeze materials before you put them in the cart
• Line your cart with paper to absorb liquids. 
• Layer food scraps with yard waste to conceal odors.  
• Wrap items in paper to absorb moisture.

Here's what goes in: 

From the kitchen:

        Fruit and vegetable peels, pits and stems 

        Meat, poultry, fish and shellfish (including bones and shells) 

       Rice, pasta, grains and cereals

        Breads, baked goods and desserts 

  Dairy products

  Eggs and eggshells

   Nuts

   Spoiled leftovers

    Coffee grounds, filters, loose tea and teabags, food-soiled paper towel and napkins

  Flowers and houseplants

  Sauces, cooking oil and grease (soak up with a napkin or paper towel)

From the yard

      Leaves, cones, grass clippings and other yard material. 

  Tree branches should be smaller than one inch in diameter.

Still not sure if an item should go in your organics cart? If you're stumped, use the online Waste Wizard or the qathet Waste Wise app available from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store,

DO NOT put any of these materials in your organics cart.

  Plastic anything. Not even biodegradable or compostable. Some products claim to be biodegradable and they're not. Better to be on the safe side and leave out all plastic.   

   Coffee pods

  Food wrap 

   Pet waste

   Biohazard waste

   Chopsticks

  Invasive species (blackberry, knotweed, ivy, broom, etc.)  

If your cart contains any of those materials, it will be deemed contaminated and will not be collected.

  Organics will be collected weekly starting March 18. 

  Garbage collection will move from weekly to biweekly starting April 2.   

  You can request an additional cart or you can put out an additional bag with a $5 tag. 

  Tags are available at:

• City Hall
• Powell River Recreation Complex
• Save-on-Foods
• FreshCo
• Top of the Hill Solutions
• Townsite Grocery

By composting, we get:

Nutrient rich soil - Organic compost helps to provide nutrients essential to plant growth, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc. It adds texture to sandy soils and helps to break down heavier clay soils. Helps soil to absorb water and reduces evaporation. Compost provides nutrients removing the need for fertilizer and physically suppresses weed growth to remove the need for herbicides. This will increase beneficial microorganisms which helps breakdown contaminants and plant disease.

Waste reduction - Composting helps divert materials from going to landfills minimizing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere and lengthening the capacity of landfills.

Lower methane emissions - When organic material like food breaks down in landfills it creates methane. If a landfill is not equipped to capture that methane, it will escape into the atmosphere and become a greenhouse gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  

  Organics are trucked to Salish Soils Inc. in Sechelt. Once there, the waste is prepared for the composting process to create Class A compost. This process takes a minimum of six months then sold as food compost and used to create garden soil.