Holyrood hopes to counter higher tipping fees by composting more

By Patrick Newhook/February 17, 2022

The Town of Holyrood is looking at composting as a way to reduce its costs at the regional landfill and become greener in the bargain.

Councilor Sadie King gave an update on the town’s community garden and compost plans at council’s February 1 meeting.

King, who chairs council’s recreation and community events committee, described last year’s community garden initiative that saw people grow their own vegetables as successful, and said the Town wants to extend it for this year.

King said the Town would like to see more people composting.

“We’re asking our residents once again to consider composting especially if they’re a gardener because the more compost they add to soil the better it is,” king said. “We’ve ordered new composting bins. The more we can compost, the less material goes to our landfill.”

Councilor Laura Crawley said composting also helps the Town in other ways.

“It would really help with the garbage pickup and waste management if we start composting and encourage composting so I’ll be behind that as well,” said Crawley.

Mayor Gary Goobie agreed that compositing ‘serves two purposes’ by reducing the amount of garbage going to the landfill, which in turn reduces the Town’s fees at the dump.

“As councilor King alluded to earlier, it’s really valuable to a garden,” said Goobie. “Everyone is going to hear more about composting in the months ahead from us.”

Deputy Mayor Michele Woodford pointed to the important of finding savings in tippage fees this year.

“A lot of the weight in the garbage bag comes from what we could be composting,” Woodford noted. “I think that’s a great way to move forward and reduce some of the fees that we were paying because of course that (fee) has increased, I’m not sure, probably $5,000 from last year, from our 2021 to our 2022 budget.”