The City of Ottawa is looking to extend the life of the Trail Road Landfill to 2049 through several initiatives to reduce the amount of waste residents are throwing out, deferring the multi-million-dollar cost of a new landfill or building a waste-to-energy facility.
City staff presented the long-range Ottawa Solid Waste Master Plan, the 30-year plan guiding waste management and diversion until 2054. The plan outlines steps the city should take in a bid to extend the life of the city’s landfill for another 14 years, while also hiking fees for waste collection.
“Ottawa’s generating far more garbage than it can manage sustainably,” Coun. Shawn Menard told councillors and the media on Friday.
“The waste plan doesn’t offer one single bullet solution to these challenges. Instead, it offers a list of actions that tackle the problem from many different angles.”
The plan comes as the city’s municipal dump, the Trail Road Landfill, is rapidly filling up, with the landfill expected to be full between 2034 and 2036. A new landfill, if required in 2034, would cost $591 million, according to the city.
“To defer costly alternatives to managing waste, whether that be a new technology or a new landfill, we need to make changes now,” Alain Gonthier, Public Works Department general manager, told councillors.
“To do this, we must work together. The more residents reduce their waste, use their green bins and ensure recycling maximized… we will be able to make an impact on diversion levels and cost deferrals.”
The updated Solid Waste Master Plan outlines five objectives and 50 actions to decrease the amount of waste going to the landfills by 15 per cent by 2029 and 23 per cent by 2034. The city wants to increase organic waste by 14 per cent by 2029.
Ottawa is introducing a three-item limit on garbage in the fall and plans to expand the green bin program to all apartments by 2027.
The new plan includes maximizing the reduction and reuse of waste, expand the Take It Back! program, more repair cafes, enforcing source separation requirements for recycling and organics, implementing a food waste reduction strategy, minimizing waste at special events, increasing waste diversion initiatives at city facilities and parks and public spaces, a bulky waste diversion strategy, pilot projects for alternative collection containers, a yellow bag program for small businesses review, single-use item reduction initiatives, and a new education and promotion plan to support implementation.
The goal is to reduce the amount of waste by 31,000 tonnes over 30 years and divert 970,520 tonnes of waste from landfills over 30 years.
Solid waste fees to increase
As part of the new Solid Waste Master Plan, the fees for garbage collection will increase to help fund operating and capital requirements until 2053.
In 2024, the average property tax bill included a $201 charge for solid waste services.
The proposed Solid Waste Master Plan could see fees increase to $265 in 2025 and $381 a year by 2034, which would help fund some of the initiatives in the plan.