The village of Burns Lake’s Corporate Officer is Laina Hegelsen. A lifetime resident of the village, Laina is familiar with the obstacles to composting when wildlife-human conflict is part of everyday life. Many residents of Burns Lake don’t compost because they don’t want any attractants for bears into their yards, but there’s another reason, according to survey results in a compost plan report: it’s too cold and hard to compost in the winter.
Laina learned about a program that the town of Quesnel, BC participated in a program aimed at municipalities that expressed a concern for their food waste and tackled the issue with a product called the Food Cycler. It’s a counter-top biomass machine that takes your kitchen scraps and turns them into a useful byproduct. Municipalities were offered a subsidized price for a sample number of units, in the case of Burns Lake, there were 85 units sold at a reduced price to their residents.
