Let's Talk Garbage in Beaumont

The primary goal of a landfill site is to stay open to accept garbage for as long as possible. Paradoxically, the way it does this is to divert as much of that garbage as possible away from the landfill. Beaumont is a member municipality of the Leduc and District Regional Waste Management Facility (LDRWMF) situated near Saunders Lake, which is where we send all our garbage. To facilitate the diversion of as much our household waste as possible, the LDRWMF is now opening a new public drop-off building on site. This will enable residents of member municipalities to access the facility separately from the heavy commercial vehicles using the site, and without the need to drive through the mud to reach the landfill cells directly. Household waste may now be separated into different categories and dropped off at the PDO for suitable processing, minimizing the amount of waste that must be sent to the landfill and then buried.

As you can see, there's also a shed for hazardous and E-waste, and another for take-it-or-leave-it of reusable items.

Each category of household waste has its own drop-off station at the new PDO

Another way to reduce the amount of garbage going into the landfill is by separating household organic waste into the organics cart. Statistics from the LDRWMF show that more than 50% of garbage can be diverted from the landfill through the combined use of both a blue bag program for recyclables and organics separation to a green bin.

However, many of Beaumont's green bins are too often contaminated with non-organic garbage (mainly plastic bags or packaging) to be used for composting. Consequently, we are not diverting as much household waste from the landfill as we could. To combat this, there will be a public awareness campaign soon advising residents of what should, and more importantly shouldn't, be going into the green bins.