Composting & Food Waste

Reducing the amount of food waste you produce by composting it is a great way to make a resource out of food that you may have otherwise thrown away in the garbage! 

• 63% of the food Canadians throw away could have been eaten.
• For the average Canadian household that amounts to 140 kilograms of wasted food per year – at a cost of more than $1,300 per year! 

The EWSWA promotes composting through encouraging its residents to: backyard composting, green cone digesting, and a previous FoodCycler pilot program. On a much larger scale, the EWSWA administers a regional, industrial composting program that produces a high quality Garden Gold Compost that its constituents like you can buy! Compost is a wonderful resource that can be utilized in so many ways. 

Composting provides a host of benefits as it:

• Significantly cuts down on the amount of unnecessary waste that is landfilled and thereby reduces the costs and carbon emissions it takes to haul and process those materials. 
• Enriches the soil with nutrients, which reduces the need for fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers and pesticides require fossil fuels for their production and shipping, and some of them are potentially harmful to our health.
• Increases the soil’s ability to retain moisture, thus helping to prevent erosion by reducing runoff. Compost prevents and suppresses plant diseases and pests. Moister, healthier soil improves the workability of the soil and reduces fossil fuel emissions that would otherwise be needed to produce and ship soil-maintenance products.
• Helps sequester carbon, meaning that composting can help remove carbon from the atmosphere.