There’s been great news from the City of Spruce Grove! I caught this note on Facebook:

The amazing upside and the star of the post is that there’s been a 9% increase in using the organics bin! That’s fantastic and a number we should be proud of!!!

It also speaks to the diversion rate.

Ah, diversion rates. Basically, that’s just fancy math to figure out exactly how much we take out of the landfill. I say fancy because I suck at all things math but I’m trying.

It’s one of my favourite numbers. I love seeing how much has been diverted. I love seeing the impact I may have had on the planet.

If you take a peek, at the dashboard they mention in the post, it goes through the three waste streams (Garbage, Recycling and Organics) and how much was collected.

It’s sort of a mixed bag of results.

The amount of Garbage collected has gone up (not great)

The amount of Recycling has gone down (not great)

The amount of Organics collected has gone up (yay!!)

and the diversion rate has gone down.

What I would like to see (and I’m sure the City would, too) is:

The amount of Garbage collected has gone down

The amount of Recycling has gone up

The amount of Organics collected has gone up

and the diversion rate has gone up.

Overall, that would mean that household waste is being sorted correctly and more things are going where they’re supposed to rather than into the black bin. (side note, if you’re not sure where something goes, try out the City’s Trim Your Trash app (you can always ask here, too!!)

We are a work in progress so let’s celebrate our win! Congrats, folks! We did good!

Have a great day!

L