Ontario’s new organic waste plan puts focus on composting in highrises

Toronto is hoping that new provincial rules will stop residents of the city’s apartment buildings, condos and other multi-residential buildings from throwing food scraps in the garbage.

Almost half of Toronto residents live in condos, apartment buildings or co-operatives, but they recycle and compost much less than single-family homes.

Ontario’s new Food and Organic Waste Framework looks to tackle that by changing building codes to require all highrises to have green bin infrastructure, as well as by eventually imposing an outright ban on any food scraps or other organics ending up in landfills.

There’s also a patchwork of collection services for apartments, condos and townhouses.

About 65 per cent of multi-residential buildings are part of the City of Toronto’s waste collection network. For those approximately 400,000 units, recycling and organics collection is mandatory.

The rest of units have private waste collection, so there’s no recycling requirements and the waste ends up in private facilities.