Gatineau waste management plan calls for more composting

Gatineau residents won't be able to put compost or construction waste like wood in their garbage in two years, the city outlined Tuesday as they laid out their waste management plan for the next five years.

The year-by-year plan to reducing household, commercial and industrial waste aims to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by 45 per cent in 2020.

In 2018 composting will be mandatory, waste collection in apartment buildings will move to once every two weeks and construction waste and other bulky waste will only be picked up four times a year. 

Coun. Denise Lafrerrière, the head of the city's environment commission, said in the next couple of years the city will focus on education, particularly in getting people to compost.

"Right now its only voluntary, but in 2018 it will be an obligation to compost so we have a lot of time...to explain why it is so, and also the benefits of doing so, instead of putting [compost] to the garbage can," she said.

The city announce any limit to the number of garbage bags per resident by 2018, instead opting more on public information campaigns over punitive measures to get people to be smarter about what they put in the garbage.