WATERLOO REGION — When a green bin for organic waste appeared on her doorstep, Gayle Kalbfleisch was keen to get started.

"I was happy," said the Waterloo woman. "I went out and got my bags (for placing waste in the bin)."

She already paid attention to reducing the garbage she sent to landfill, and for her this was another great way to divert more.

Now two-thirds of the waste from her townhouse goes into her recycling containers and green bins, and she puts just a single garbage bag at the curb every few weeks.

Her motivation is both simple and monumental: "This is your home. This is what you leave behind for your children."

But Kalbfleisch is in the minority in Waterloo Region when it comes to being an avid green bin user.

Since green bins were rolled out across the region by 2010, only between 15 and 35 per cent of residents use them. And it's costing us.

The region is paying $2.3 million every year to the City of Guelph to process our green bin waste. That price is based on 20,000 tonnes annually being trucked to the facility, but last year not even 9,000 tonnes were collected.

The goal of diverting organic waste is to extend the life of the regional landfill site in Waterloo, which has an estimated 20 years of capacity left.

Yet there's a lot of resistance to the green bin. The region diverts just over half of our waste from the landfill through recycling, yard waste pickup, and drop-offs, compared to some municipalities that reach 65 and 70 per cent.

"We are lagging behind a little bit. It is unfortunate," said Kathleen Barsoum, co-ordinator of waste management for the region.

It's especially unfortunate, she said, because this region is the home of the blue box.

That started as a pilot project in the neighbourhood around the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium in 1981, and soon expanded as people were eager to get on board with recycling. In the first month after 1,000 homes were asked to sort cans, glass and paper from their garbage, more than triple the expected amount was collected.

The driving force behind the recycling program was Kitchener's Nyle Ludolph, who later rallied behind the green bin.

Barsoum worked with Ludolph on green bin campaigns after meeting him at a celebration for the 25th anniversary of the blue box, when the regional recycling centre was named after Ludolph in recognition for his contribution.

Ludolph appeared in commercials to promote the green bin with the simple message that "we can do this again."

While recycling is widespread now, the program took a while to gain momentum here and there was opposition at first.

"Recycling was slow to catch on, too," Barsoum said. "It took a few years for people to get into the habit."

Now 95 per cent of residents use the blue bin.

"Nyle firmly believed that we could do the same with food waste," she said.

Half of household waste can go into the green bin — an amount Barsoum said has a real "shock factor" for people when they start to use the green bin.

But she said she also understands why some are reluctant to separate their organic waste because it is "a little bit more work."

That extra work is a big hurdle when it comes to green bin use, says Carrie Mitchell, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo's school of planning.

"It really comes down to a matter of convenience, or a lack thereof," Mitchell said.

"It's dirty and it's messy and people are busy and they would rather throw it out."

Her students are studying recycling behaviour on campus as a class project. They're finding good recycling rates where it's easy and accessible.

If recycling or composting is just a short distance from garbage bins, she said, "things that would normally be recycled get thrown into the garbage."

Mitchell said it comes down to two things: convenience and clarity. Clarity is how easy it is to understand the rules about what can be recycled and composted, as well as signage on bins. Every jurisdiction has different rules about both, which also complicates the issue, and often it's difficult to recycle while out in the community where bins are sparse or in apartment buildings or offices.

"This is really the challenge: make it convenient and make it clear," Mitchell said.

She is hopeful, and sees progress.

"Recycling behaviour has taken decades to socialize, so composting behaviour needs to be given similar time," Mitchell said.

"People want to do the right thing."

For Barsoum, the right thing is also the easy thing. She used to have a backyard composter, but now she finds it easier to toss everything into the green bin. Certain things that can't go into backyard composters, such as bones and animal waste, are just fine for the green bin.

She developed her own system, such as putting newspaper on the kitchen counter when she's preparing meals and putting all the peelings and scraps on there to wrap up and put in the green bin outside. For those who complain about buying bags for the green bin, she points out garbage bags aren't cheap.

The Guelph plant that processes the organic matter uses an all-natural process, and the resulting mulch can go back onto local farmer's fields to enrich the soil for better crops — a sustainable and local solution.

"It's such an impact on the environment locally and globally," Barsoum said.

She talks to people who are won over by green bins once they give it a try, and recently there's been a rush of people coming in for green bins — primarily new users.

Barsoum urges people who are dubious to take a 30-day challenge and see what a difference it makes to how much garbage goes out to the curb for landfill.

"You feel really good about it," Barsoum said.

People will have to start using their green bins in the future. Regional council voted in May to cut garbage collection starting in 2017. Green and blue bins will be collected every week, and garbage every other week with an initial limit of four bags per household. Those that go over the four-bag limit will need to buy bag tags to have the extra garbage collected. The limit will be cut to three bags per pickup no later than 2019.

Those impending changes were what prompted Wayne Hall's family to give the green bin a chance.

"We figured it was going to happen anyway," said Hall, who lives with his wife in an apartment of his daughter's Kitchener home. She is a single mom with two young boys, and the five people were producing a lot of garbage, including leftovers and spoiled food.

Hall is now a reluctant green bin convert, after it was foisted on him by his family. He was worried about the smell.

After a couple of months, he's surprised to see how much less garbage they put out at the curb, and he's pleased to find his objection to odours was unfounded.

"There virtually is no smell, so that's where I'm happy," Hall said.

This week, the family put out three recycling bins, a green bin and one garbage bag. While he says he's "still not convinced" about green bins, he admitted it is a good idea.

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Barsoum believes the time is right for green bins, as people become more interested in eating local and backyard gardening.

When organic waste goes to the dump, it is wasted.

"If it goes to landfill, it just sits," Barsoum said.

It's sealed in a "dry tomb" with no water, no air and slow decomposition. Up to 700 tonnes a day are dumped in the landfill, crushed and covered each night with soil or biodegradable mulch.

"They pile layer upon layer upon layer of garbage in there," Barsoum said.

When one cell is full, it's capped and sealed and another started. Cells used to last 16 to 18 years when the landfill opened in 1972, now they are active only four to six years.

Seeing is believing. Barsoum said when schoolchildren tour the regional waste management site for educational programs, they're awestruck by the sheer volume of garbage.

"The bus actually becomes quiet," she said. "When they see what actually happens, you see the light bulbs go on."

Many schools in the region run green bin programs, and Barsoum said the neighbourhoods around those schools are more likely to recycle organics.

But it's not just about using the green bin.

Kate Parizeau, an assistant professor in the University of Guelph's geography department, wants to make sure what's going into green bins should be there.

Guelph has been ahead of the curve in separating garbage into three streams, but that doesn't mean there's not room for improvement.

"People are using the green bin, but not perfectly in Guelph," Parizeau said. "We found that there is a lot of avoidable food waste."

That finding comes from literally sorting through people's garbage to see what they're throwing out.

Two-thirds of food bin contents was avoidable — food that's thrown out because it's gone bad or is no longer desired, or food that some people would eat but others would not such as apple or potato peels. Unavoidable food waste includes bones and apple cores.

"Diversion is so important," said Parizeau, who said Guelph had the highest diversion rate in the province last year. "But then we need to think about reducing."

Composting is an expensive program, she said, and it's important to ensure only inedible scraps are being thrown out.

She said part of it is lifestyle, with busy people buying prepared food because it's convenient and then not eating what's in the fridge at home.

"When people think more about their food, they tend to waste less," Parizeau said.

Kalbfleisch is careful about what food she brings into her home, and makes almost all her own meals after a well-thought-out trip to the grocery store.

"You plan your meals, only buy what you need to make those meals," Kalbfleisch said.

She keeps an eye on the food in her fridge, and produce that is about to go bad is quickly repurposed. Fruit goes into the freezer for smoothies, and vegetables are turned into broth.

She avoids convenient, single-serving sizes and stocks up on non-perishable foods in bulk to cut down on packaging she needs to throw out. She makes it easy to gather organic waste throughout the house by having bags in handy spots in the bathrooms and by the cat litter box.

Long before recycling was widespread, she'd gather paper and magazines and take them to a depot, and she used to have a composter in the backyard too.

The regional landfill site is not too far from her townhouse, so the impact of people choosing not to use their green bins is not far from mind for Kalbfleisch.

"They're going to have to expand that and it's going to cost all of us," she said.

That ballooning volume of garbage ending up in the rapidly filling landfill concerns Barsoum, who wants people to think more about the impact of their choices from what they buy to what they do with garbage.

"We have to think bigger than ourselves," she said.

And that's what the man behind the blue bin campaigned for during the first wave of recycling in this region, knowing a small effort by many could have a huge effect.

"It goes back to what Nyle said: Recycling is something each one of us can do to make a difference."