Large generators of organic waste from the industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI) sectors are not eligible for curbside collection, however many expressed an interest in diverting organics. Necessity led to innovation and a new partnership with the Circular Innovation Council (CIC) to develop a unique pilot project to not only develop strategies to overcome some of the common challenges with collecting and diverting these materials from the ICI sector (particularly cost) but to also identify opportunities to rescue food, improve access to healthy foods, reduce the amount of food wasted to begin with, and develop financially viable, efficient, and sustainable collection systems for organic waste. In the first 18 months, more than 22 tonnes of edible food was rescued, 303 tonnes of organic waste was collected and turned into 94 cubic yards of compost—a great success by any measure.

This is exciting work with many challenges met, more lessons to be learned and shared with other municipalities, with the goal that other communities will see similar successes in diverting and managing food waste.