Sanitation: Waste Transfer Station

Sanitation: Waste Transfer Station

A First Nation in Northern Ontario has developed a waste transfer station to manage solid waste from the community as there isn’t additional space at the current landfill. Now operational, the transfer station faces some challenges – the waste is trucked about an hour away and has basically put the First Nation’s problem in the backyard of someone else; the bins are being charged by volume not weight, which means there can be voids in the bin with air gaps that the Nation is being charged for. There are two non-Indigenous communities and four Indigenous communities within an hour of the transfer station. What can the Nation do to reduce the transportation cost of the waste? Are there economies of scale that can be gained by working with surrounding communities?