Composting Advocacy | karynklairekoski1

Launching Climate Action Plans in Cottage Country Waste Management

Immediate research is needed to devise large scale, onsite, composting accelerators that have the ability to identify and remove plastics, process organic matter and harvest a viable product that adds nutrients to the earth.

We often have bears at our cottage, so I don’t have a composter to process our food scraps. What I do, is freeze full bags to make it more pleasant to transport them to the dump, that is, if I can make it there within their restricted, operational hours. I often wind up taking frozen compostables back home to the City with me.

Our local cottage country dump in McKellar, Ontario is a transfer station which means that accumulated garbage is transported elsewhere by gas powered vehicles. There is no organic diversion and despite my attempts at separation, in rural townships, organic waste matter is mixed in with regular household trash.

At the mercy of vermin, nuisance wildlife and oxygen, organic matter decomposes and releases methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane gas is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming potential.

Methane Gas elimination is a concern in Cottage Country and should be part of every district’s Call to Climate Action Plan.

The Ontario government has the responsibility to mandate the regulation of potential hazards that can affect its constituents’ health and welfare. And in turn, the Federal Government must pave the way for national education and funding to support every municipal district’s Call to Climate Action plan.

If organic processing composting units were made available at every cottage country dump, methane gases could be harnessed and converted to the electrical power that operates the infrastructure at Rural Waste Management Centres.