The City of Prince Albert is selling affordable compost bins they’ve repurposed from old garbage and recycling ones.
They’ve been customized by Kin Enterprises to use in your backyard.
The compost bins are for sale at the landfill in two sizes. A 65 gallon bin that holds roughly 200kg of compost costs $25 and a 200 gallon bin holding about 485kg is $30.
Sanitation Manager Nisar Ghani said it’s a win-win situation—not only are they able to divert those bins from the landfill, but they’re also encouraging people to compost.
“These bins (were) sitting at the landfill for many, many years and we didn’t know what to do with it,” he said.
“It’s an affordable option,” emphasized Ghani. It would cost about the same amount of the bin to organically fertilize only a portion of your lawn.
“It’s a really good situation for everybody—for the city and the residents.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Ghani said they’ve sold about 10 of the 50 repurposed bins: “They’re buying it, so people are really interested.”
They started selling them at the landfill on Wednesday.
The City of Prince Albert has instructions on their website to first dig a hole around the bottom of the bin and, when it’s full, to lift it up so the soil will come out the bottom.
Quick composting requires four things: green material such as grass and food scraps, brown material like dead leaves or wood chips, air, which is incorporated through mixing the materials and with holes on the sides of the bins, and water.
Composting yourself diverts waste from the landfill and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.