By Adam Ophus

Waste Audit

Audit shows Rocky still has a way to go in waste reduction

Sep 18, 2019 | 9:10 AM

The Town of Rocky Mountain House is currently undergoing a waste audit conducted by the waste reduction organization Sonnevera.

In a recent town council meeting, Christina Seidel and Lindsay Seidel-Wassenaar, professional engineers with Sonnevera, gave their initial report on where Rocky stands compared to other municipalities in the province, and how much trash is able to be diverted from landfills.

For three days Sonnevera had surveyors at the transfer station asking people who came through where they were from and if they were dropping off for personal or business.

“In total of all the people coming through 60% were from the county and 40% were from the town…the majority were residents,” said Seidel-Wassenaar.

She explained that surveyors would ask town residents how often they came to the landfill, with over half saying they used it every week, a quarter every month and some going every single day.

eyes up

Air Spray training around Red Deer Regional Airport

15m ago

Prevention, Access, Recovery, and Coordination

Safe Harbour officially hands over shelter keys, establishes accessible navigation hub

18h ago

lacombe and sylvan lake

December 2025 (un)employment data released for Alberta sub-regions

19h ago

Councillor Michelle Narang gave into her curiosity by asking since many of the landfill users were from town, what was their reason for using it, were the town bins to small or were they not participating in the curbside pickup.

“We only asked those from town, but we didn’t foresee this happening, that people were coming this often for residential garbage,” explained Seidel-Wassenaar.

“The most surprising thing we found was just how many beverage containers we found in residential garbage,” proclaimed Seidel.

The audit found in random garbage load checks between 40 and 80 beverage containers per load, and could only speculate why Rocky had a higher than average amount.

In the company’s early conclusions they found that the town could divert up to 50% of its waste from the waste streams by reducing the amount of organics and recyclables people were disposing into their regular garbage.

The graph shows overall volume of garbage at Rocky transfer station by Sonnevera during a visual inpection.

Overall waste by weight at Rocky transfer station during inspection by Sonnevera.