Local compost sales will crash, and the City of Whitehorse is ignoring thousands of customers, says Garret Gillespie, owner of Boreal Compost.

The company had the previous contract to run the city’s compost facility.

Council opted to cancel the contract after Boreal and Adorna Landscaping were the only companies to bid on the three-year deal that would have started Nov. 1.

Its joint bid was substantially higher than the $276,100 the city was estimating it would cost to run the facility and keep organic certification.

Boreal’s and Adorna’s bid was at $311,912 in the first year, $357,281 in the second year and $375,145 in the third year.

Its bid included additional marketing and expanding into the delivery of compost, which the city hadn’t included in the tender.

With the contract cancelled, the city is now running its facility at the landfill and selling compost from it.

Gillespie continues to argue the decision is bad news for customers who may have to go to the dump instead of commercial garden centres to get compost.

The axing of the compost facility contract will leave thousands of compost users without compost, he said in a statement Wednesday.

The city will not be filling the void left by the departure of facility operator Boreal Compost, he added.

“When the city made the announcement, we started to get a lot of phone calls and emails from concerned customers,” Gillespie said.

“There was a spate of panic buying; people don’t trust the city or what they will do.”

With organic certification, compost sales have been growing, he added.

“We had record sales of over 500 cubic yards this year, the most that has ever been sold in Whitehorse. This is in stark contrast to when the city operated the facility, when they recorded no sales whatsoever for a few years in a row,” said Gillespie.

The growth in sales was achieved by building public confidence and trust in the product, he added.

“We were the first food waste facility operator in Canada to attain organic certification, we had customer service, product support, and, most importantly, we delivered the product. All this has been eliminated by city council,” Gillespie pointed out.

“The most frustrating part is the city won’t use its own compost. There are tiny gardens downtown that use more compost than the city.”

The cancelled contract tender is part of a growing body of evidence that the city compost program is in trouble, he said.

“If we had followed the tender to the letter, we could easily do the bare minimum the City stipulated for around $240,000 with organic certification, unlike the city’s $275,000 plan,” Gillespie argued.

“However, this is a recipe for disaster, and not something we are prepared to do.”

Compost sales need to quadruple for the facility to function normally, otherwise compost begins to build up, and other problems develop, he said.

It already costs about $60,000 a year to market and distribute compost, but Boreal Compost estimates it will cost about $150,000 a year for the next few years to expand and service the compost market, in addition to the cost of running the facility.

“The city expects the contractor to front all the costs to move the city’s compost, but for a three-year term, it is high-risk, and no payback,” Gillespie said.

“We are not making money selling compost now, and I don’t see that changing for a few years yet.

“Other municipalities set a five- to 10-year term, reducing risk and lowering the cost, but Whitehorse doesn’t see the sense in that model.”

Compost collection is set to double in the next few years, and with the collapse in sales, material will pile up quickly, he predicted.

“The city is spending $275,000 a year to build a mountain of premium compost as big as the Canada Games Centre by this time next year.

“In the meantime, thousands of compost customers won’t be able to buy compost at a local garden centre, get convenient deliveries, or get a pickup truck load. This is a very sad situation.”