Compost Winnipeg is a social enterprise by Green Action Centre. They serve both residential and commercial sites. At our Winnipeg warehouse, we depend on them to help compost the parts of food donations that are no longer edible. They are an integral part of our work to keep food from ending up in the landfill!
The City of Winnipeg currently does not offer any city-wide compost pickup like in other provinces around Canada, so Compost Winnipeg is a small-scale, paid service. They visit our warehouse every Wednesday to collect our waste and transport it to a local composting facility.
This year’s Food Waste Action Week takes place March 18-24, 2024. Winnipeggers can take tangible action in the fight against food waste by composting residentially with Compost Winnipeg while we await a government-supported solution to residential waste!
Compost Winnipeg traces its origins to 2014, when Green Action Centre began exploring the possibility of starting its own social enterprise with the goal of raising revenue for its programming, while at the same time furthering its mandate to reduce waste and address climate change. During this exploration stage, organic waste collection emerged as the business model with the highest potential to serve both of these goals and to address the following local realities:
- A very high portion of organic waste was ending up in Winnipeg landfills relative to most other cities in North America.
- Organic waste diversion simply wasn’t occurring at any significant scale, leading to significant greenhouse gas emissions as organic waste rotted in the landfill, producing methane.
Winnipeg residents and businesses had limited access to services for organic waste collection and composting. Although other services existed, their uptake was limited in the community and the organic waste diversion sector lacked a central voice in Winnipeg.
Seeing the opportunity to provide a much-needed service, and generate revenue for Green Action Centre while preventing waste and greenhouse gas emissions, Compost Winnipeg was launched in 2016. Since then, the service has grown from a single pickup truck for collection to a 7-truck fleet serving most areas of the city and diverting over 120,000 kgs of organic waste from the landfill every month!
While growing the operation, Compost Winnipeg has been able to increase its monthly contributions to the Green Action Centre programs. To further its goal of 100% organic waste diversion from the landfill, Compost Winnipeg plans to continually expand its service, bringing more residents and businesses into an exciting new era of organic waste management!
We are proud to say that since 2016 we have diverted 6.1 million kilograms of organic waste from the landfill.
Learn more about the services Compost Winnipeg offers on our website at compostwinnipeg.ca
