The City of Lethbridge’s Mandatory Recycling and Mandatory Organics program is getting ready to grade waste reports from the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors.
With the grades, the Lethbridge School Division is coming out at the top of the class. LSD has been working for several months on creating a fun way for students and staff alike to separate their waste.
“I thought, oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? But after we started working through the information, it quickly turned into a really fun project that everyone from students to staff have been able to work on together,” says Christine Lee, LSD Associate Superintendent, Business and Operations.
“We formed a sub-committee and we got to work on figuring out, how we could design a program that incorporates the changes but doesn’t add too much additional work to our caretaking staff.”
LSD includes more than 25 schools and admin buildings as well as facilities, so various resources helped to navigate the change. Including using the RE3 program which centres around reducing, reusing, and recycling. The program helps both staff and students understand the bigger picture environmentally for waste.
“We had so much fun with the program. We did a roving reporter series, talked to staff and students about their experience with the new waste program. We even created a contest where classes could enter their ideas and projects to help raise awareness about the program,” says Lee.
This past year, the city has been in talks with the industrial, commercial, and institutional sector in various ways to help inform and support businesses and organizations through the change.
“We want to set up the local businesses, organizations and institutions for success in helping them through these changes,” says Felipe Albuquerque, Waste Diversion Engineer, City of Lethbridge Waste & Environment department. “We know these folks have a lot to juggle so making this process as straightforward as possible was important. We have visited more than 550 businesses in-person to help communicate these changes in addition to presenting at industry meetings like the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown BRZ, by writing to them directly with emails, letters and postcards and advertising the changes locally.”
The city has more than 2,900 businesses, institutions and private organizations and these all fall under the Mandatory Recycling and Mandatory Organics provisions with the city’s Waste Bylaw 6146. The bylaw also means businesses need to complete an annual waste report which is due by Jan. 31.