Keep plastics out of your yard trimmings cart

Our composting facility in Richmond can’t process any kind of plastics, even bags marketed as “biodegradable”. As a result, the City is adopting a paper-only policy for the Food Scraps collection program.

We encourage you to purchase compostable paper bags at local retailers to wrap your food scraps in, as they are accepted by our composting facility. With this accepted alternative, there’s no reason to use plastic bags to wrap your food scraps. No one wants to use compost that has pieces of plastic in it.

Where to purchase compostable paper bags

No plastics guide - Chinese (121 kb)

Don’t sabotage your efforts

People in Vancouver who use a backyard composter know not to put plastics into their backyard bin. By adding plastic to your yard trimmings/compostable cart, you are negating your own efforts and possibly those of your neighbours as well. If there is too much plastic contamination, the truckload of yard trimmings and food scraps might simply go to the landfill.

Please don’t put any plastic in your yard trimmings cart!

Here are some suggestions you can try instead:

• Get a kitchen container to put daily scraps in, lined with newspaper or compostable brown paper bags to reduce leaks and odours
• Wrap any vegetable or fruit in newspaper or brown paper before putting it in your compostables cart. Please don’t use cling wrap or plastic bags of any kind. If there is plastic in your cart, it might not be collected.
• Sprinkle baking soda into your kitchen container to reduce odours and pests
• Put all your food scraps into your compostables cart for bi-weekly collection

Learn more on how to manage pests and odours

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