Greenlid promises to clean up composting

Do you dread cleaning your green bin?

A McMaster graduate and his brother have invented a product that promises to take the “ick factor” out of composting. They’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their innovation.

“Bringing it through my house in the summer time with the maggots and stuff cause there’s no easy way to get it to the front yard.”

“Fruit flies in the summer, smells and stuff like that.”

These are common complaints about green bins.

Inventor Jackson Wyatt says “It’s kind of one of those tasks that I don’t think anybody really enjoys doing.”

That’s why the Wyatt brothers invented the Greenlid – a biodegradable container that can go directly into your streetside green bin or backyard compost heap.

As co-creator Morgan Wyatt explains, “it will quite rapidly break down and it can actually improve your compost quality.”

They hope by giving consumers an alternative to messy bags and bins, fewer people will throw their food waste in the garbage.

Jackson: “It just becomes an everyday, all the time constant diversion of your organic waste into those facilities and we get some great quality soil out of it.”

Hamilton’s goal is to divert 65 per cent of waste out of landfills. But the city’s Evelyn Storey says we’re not even close.

“There is still a way to go that households can do to participate in our diversion and our recycling programs.”

In 2012, we only sent 47 per cent of household waste to our green bins and recycling.

Even in a city the size of Hamilton, every household helps.