How Yellowknife’s new compost cart spot checks will work

The City of Yellowknife has provided more details about the new checks of compost carts City Hall announced earlier this week.

The municipality told Cabin Radio the checks on residents’ green carts – which are normally collected twice a week, and head to a facility managed by the city – will be carried out at random.

Solid waste staff will inspect compost bins along their route that were chosen through a random draw. Their aim will be to prevent household garbage from contaminating the compost, city officials said.

If they find something non-compostable in your bin, a slip will be left to let you know what should or shouldn’t be in there.

Currently, there is no punishment or repercussion for putting non-compostable items in the compost bin.

“We’re moving more along the lines of an education aspect to let people know what they can put in and what the consequences are,” said city director of public works Chris Greencorn.

“If they put other things in, it ends up affecting the overall quality of the compost.”

The city’s goal is to eventually make its compost available to the public again. Currently, compost collected by the city is not of a high-enough quality, so it is used as ground cover instead.

“My message to folks is, please keep composting,” said Greencorn.

“It saves us costs at the landfill one way or another, because if we didn’t have the compost, we would have to buy material to use for cover.

“So it is a saving, and it is helping us at the landfill quite a bit.”