New product hoped to stop Waterloo landfill garbage from smelling
Posted Aug 31, 2017 04:31:44 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A new odour-neutralizing product is being tested at the Waterloo landfill, following years of complaints from residents who say the dump’s foul smell is a problem.
In the Region’s latest effort to mask or minimize the odour at the Erb Street site, a new plant-based product was applied to a small mountain of garbage at the landfill on Tuesday.
It’s supposed to reduce, or hopefully completely eliminate, the compound in the waste that gives the decomposing garbage its smell.
Air quality readings were taken before the application, and will be taken again in about a week’s time, to measure whether or not the product works.
“It’s in an area too that we’re not going to landfill right away. We’re going to keep it separate so we can just monitor it as a trial,” says Senior Environmental Engineer with the Region, Linda Churchill. She says the product was applied to a new cell near an active dumping area.
So far this year, the Region has received 35 odour complaints.
“We’re always on the watch for different products and developments in the odour-control market … So we have a fence line mister. We’re actually trialling a vaporizer system as well,” Churchill says. “But this is the first one we’ve trialled to go right on the garbage.”
Should the product prove effective, it’ll be applied to a wider area, and the next test will be to see how long it lasts.
