Winnipeggers once more recycled their jack-o-lanterns at Compost Winnipeg’s second annual Pumpkin Drop.
People gathered at the highest of the Polo Park parkade to toss their gourds into dump trucks waiting below on Saturday.
Last 12 months’s event kept 24,000 kilograms — or 10 per cent of all pumpkins grown in Manitoba — out of the landfill, where they produce harmful methane gas.
“Since 2018, we’ve invested over $11 million into Brady Landfill to hoover out that methane,” said Karrie Blackburn, with Compost Winnipeg.
This 12 months, as a substitute of just composting them, intact pumpkins are put aside to be eaten to further reduce food waste.
Compost Winnipeg added more drop-off locations around the town, but only Polo Park has the two-story plunge.
The event comes just because the City’s two-year Residential Food Waste Collection Pilot Project got here to an in depth. The ultimate report is due within the spring.
Organic materials make as much as 40 per cent of household waste, based on Blackburn.
“We’re anywhere from three to 5 years out from having city-wide compost collection for single-family dwellings — there’s plenty that might be done with multi-family dwellings,” she said.
“Whether that be condos, apartments, and even businesses, restaurants, hotels, you name it, all these places have organic waste, and we may very well be capturing it and stopping it from ending up within the landfill.”
Donations were also collected on the event and shall be applied to the organic waste collection for an area nonprofit organization, Blackburn says.
— With files from Global’s Iris Dyck
