Toronto Sends Trash to London, ON Instead of Michigan Landfill

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Waste in the City of Toronto will no longer be sent 400 km to Carlton Farms Landfill across the border in Michigan.  Michigan had limited Toronto's trash volume in 2004, but recently announced they will be closing their border to Toronto waste at the end of 2010. 

A local 70% Waste Diversion Plan introduced volume-based fee structures for Torontonians in 2008 after Green Lane Landfill was obtained near London Ontario in 2007.

Difference Between Organic Waste & Garbage

By definition, organic waste is not at the end of its life cycle and can be reused and/or recycled, whereas garbage cannot be reused so is collected and then compacted and buried in a landfill.

Organic material is waste, but not garbage. By separating and collecting organic waste, the material can be processed by anaerobic digestion and converted into reusable compost.Compost is produced by natural biological decay of plants and micro-organisms. Compost can be used to condition and fertilize soil by adding nutrients and beneficial bacteria. Compost is valuable to farmers, gardeners and for agriculture in general.

If compost is disposed of as garbage at a landfill it creates more leachate (leachate is caused primarily by precipitation percolating from deposited waste in landfill becoming a highly toxic fluid juice formed as a result of untreated, oxygen deprived toxins from the biodegradation of organic waste).

Malodorous leachate is then collected and treated with a costly engineered compacting disposing process.Toronto's green bin landfill diversion program has since become the largest in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and one of the top programs in North America whereby in just one year more than 1,900 tons of compost was collected and used for local community events.