Starting during the first week of May, weekly pick up of green carts will begin for the season and continue until Oct. 27.
Common compostable items that can be placed in your green cart include food waste, paper coffee filters/grounds, tea bags, meat, baked goods, dairy products, eggs, soiled cardboard, facial tissue, grass clippings and leaves. No household garbage or plastic bags please.
Plastic bags contaminate the whole truckload – resulting in organics being sent to the landfill as garbage instead of being turned into compost.
A complete list of items that can be composted in your green cart is posted on the town website at www.ponoka.ca/p/green-carts.
Ponoka residents are also welcome to bring compostable yard waste free of charge to the town’s Waste Transfer Station.
If yard waste is bagged and is brought to the Waste Transfer Station, citizens must open the bags and empty the contents onto the town’s organics pile. No bags (even compostable) can be placed on the town’s organic pile.
Citizens are asked not to use grey carts or green carts to transport yard waste to the Waste Transfer Station.
The grey and green carts pose a risk of contamination due to residual household waste and other organic matter that may be stuck to the inside walls of the carts.
The Waste Transfer Station also does not accept kitchen waste for its compost pile as the facility is not set up to compost that type of material.
Kitchen waste can only be composted through the curbside green cart program where the waste is transported to an approved composting site.
Starting on May 1, the Waste Transfer Station will switch to summer hours from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will be open Monday through Saturday (closed on statutory holidays).
For more information about the Waste Transfer Station, please visit www.ponoka.ca/p/waste-transfer-station.