Adirondack Park Nature Magazine

How to handle human trash within special landscapes varies across North America.  Here in the Adirondacks, all waste and recycling is now hauled outside of the park.  But in the Canadian Maritimes, the people and businesses of Prince Edward Island – faced with a growing number of landfills marring their island landscape – decided to institute a recycling and composting program back in 1999.  The program is extensive, islanders can recycle plastics #1 through #5, and all organic material can be composted. The island now diverts 65% of their waste to recycling and composting.  That’s compared with the unofficial rates of 10-25% in the Adirondacks.

Kinna Ohman traveled to Prince Edward Island for the first time last August.  She was struck by the effort the island made to educate visitors, as well as their residents, about the responsibility of recycling and composting every piece of waste possible. For the first part of this series, Kinna Ohman met with Gerry Moore, CEO of Island Waste Management on Prince Edward Island, to hear more about the extensive program. You’ll find audio clips of this conversation below.
__________________________

Although environmental awareness was part of Prince Edward Island’s decision to begin an extensive recycling and composting program, Gerry Moore says it wasn’t all.

Moore says there were around 35 municipal landfills scattered throughout the island at that time.

Gerry Moore says they needed to stop filling up landfill space in a hurry, so…

Moore says mandatory doesn’t mean fines, but it does mean residents and businesses have to “source separate” – in other words, place anything that could be composted (from food to miscellaneous paper products) and recycled in special containers.  And, to make it easy, Moore says these were provided.

And all this is being done as a business – balancing the costs with the revenue.  Gerry Moore says they’ve been able to stay profitable, even when offering services almost unheard of in other communities.

Moore’s happy with the fact they started saving landfill space right away.  He says now, looking back almost ten years, the landscape they’ve saved from more landfills is really obvious.

And Gerry Moore’s advice to other communities that want to save landfill space and preserve special landscapes?

In September, you’ll get a chance to visit Prince Edward Island’s composting facility in the second part of this series.  Gerry Moore, in the above photo, points to the facility.