It started with about 500 houses in Caulfeild in West Vancouver, but soon every street on the North Shore could see food scraps including meats, dairy and vegetables picked up separately from their household garbage.

Since 2009, the area between the Upper Levels Highway, Caulfeild Drive and Meadfield Road has been part of a Metro Vancouver pilot project to pick up food scraps in a yard trimmings container, which then goes to Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre, a processing facility in Richmond.

A mixture of yard trimmings, meat, fish bones, fruits, vegetables, paper towels and soggy pizza boxes goes into the plant, and what comes out is rich, black soil ready for gardens across the region. In a landfill, that same material would instead produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps far more heat than carbon dioxide.

"We were interested in it from the get-go just because of the potential to lower the cost eventually and also to divert more out of the garbage stream," said Phil Bates, West Vancouver's manager of engineering services, explaining why they volunteered to take part in the pilot project. More waste diverted would also mean lower disposal fees for residents, he added. "Garbage tipping fees are escalating quite drastically, so over a five-year period we can actually see a savings."

The same service will likely soon be offered across the North Shore now that the logistics have been sorted out, but some upgrades are still needed. First, the North Shore Transfer Depot on Riverside Drive needs to have a roof put on to control odour. Without that, trucks would have to drive all the way to Richmond directly.

"That is a barrier for us on the North Shore. It's too far to go and it really doesn't make any sense," said Bates.

The municipality was also concerned about bears accessing the garbage, but they found no change in problems with wildlife.

Currently there are six municipalities that accept at least some food scraps, including Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody, although the range of items allowed varies, and in Vancouver it's only fruits and vegetables right now.

About three quarters of homes in the study put organic material at the curb each day, and if all houses in Metro Vancouver participated to the same extent, an extra one per cent of the region's waste would be diverted from the landfill.

It's not much, said Andrew Marr, senior engineer with Metro Vancouver, but he called it a good start.

Part of the problem is people hadn't grown fully accustomed to the changes, said Marr, and it will help the region meet its goal to increase the amount of waste diverted from the landfill to 70 per cent from 55 per cent.

"Mature programs, such as Seattle, would divert about three per cent, which is nothing to sneeze at when you're trying to go from 55 per cent to 70," he said.

Metro Vancouver expects most of the region's municipalities to be on board by 2011.

Right now, only single-family homes offer food scrap pick-up, not multi-family or commercial uses, such as supermarkets and restaurants, which produce the "lion's share" of organic waste.

Most commercial waste, however, is dense food scraps, not yard waste or paper towels, and so is much more prone to odour, said Marr.