The Manager of Recreation and Community Services for the Rural Municipality of Hanover says their community depots are now wrapped up for the year.

Lisa Baldwin explains it is still a pilot program. In 2015, there was a total of seven depots held in Mitchell and Kleefeld, bringing in 15 tonnes of organic waste. This year, the decision was made to expand to New Bothwell, Grunthal and Blumenort, after those communities expressed interest. A total of 38 depots collected nearly 40 tonnes of waste.

"I think the message is getting out there and I think that they definitely became more and more popular as the season went on," says Baldwin.

She notes they get a lot of tonnage in spring and fall, but not so much during the summer months. In fact, for depots in late October, the large trailer they use was no longer big enough and they had to rent extra bins in order to handle all of the waste.

Compost depots are staffed to avoid contamination, explains Baldwin. The waste is delivered to Overton Environmental and Baldwin says even one plastic bag could contaminate the whole load.

"And then it's pretty much pointless," she says. "Your efforts to divert waste from the landfill and to be environmentally responsible, then we're just having to take that load to the landfill and we basically just negated what we are trying to do."

According to Baldwin, the program will continue in 2017, but she says changes are in the works. As a pilot program, she says they learned some lessons this year and will make changes to make it bigger and better. One idea is to potentially offer some permanent sites that are unstaffed.

"Obviously that's the most cost effective but the risk there is contamination," she says.

Another thought is to have the compost trailer in each community on a specific night each week.