THUNDER BAY — Composting efforts have been happening at the Intercity Shopping Centre for close to a year now.
It was initially soft-launched last January for food court vendors only, said the mall's general manager, Stacey Ball.
"We gave each of the tenants some five-gallon bins, and we asked them to collect their food waste and then dispose of it into our central collection area. We tried that out for about a week just to make sure that everyone was on board and knew what to do."
Food vendors were receptive to the changes, and the new procedures were rolled out to the public within a couple of weeks in early 2023.
Ball explained the process for switching to a composting system started in 2022.
"It's quite a bit of leg work because there's many different types of technology and machines that are available," she said.
In total, the project cost around $140,000, which included shipping the composter from South Korea, building the tray station in the food court, as well as all other related supplies and infrastructure for the new carbon footprint reduction strategy for ISC.
"We actually haven't found that it necessarily has reduced our costs, but it's the right thing to do. It will be mandated by 2025, so we wanted to get ahead of the curve and make sure that we were doing our part.
"Waste diversion is just one part of our overall strategy to reduce our carbon footprint."
The ISC has diverted over 33-metric tons of waste from their waste stream, Ball said.
While there was a learning curve for staff, customers are still getting used to the idea of a central disposal counter in the food court versus having multiple garbage bins throughout the space.
"Some people, they don't know necessarily what to do with their garbage because we've removed all garbage and recycling containers from the food court. So once they see the tray station, they either bring their trays up or we collect them from their table."
Ball confirmed that garbage and recycling containers would be kept throughout the shopping centre's hallways.
The composting unit runs for approximately 16 hours and is virtually soundless during the process of converting food to a peat-moss-like substance.
Ball noted the compost created from the mall's food waste will go to a good home.
"We haven't finalized all of the details at this point, but I hope to in the coming weeks and they'll be putting that into their community gardens and using our composted material for their future growth."
Now that this large-scale project is complete, Ball said they'll be working on reducing the mall's greenhouse gas output.
