Why Calgary Isn't Burning Its Trash (Despite What Reddit Thinks)

CALGARY, AB — A Reddit thread this week claimed Calgary's landfills are overflowing and suggested the city should pivot to waste-to-energy incinerators, citing better carbon capture tech and land scarcity. It's a compelling narrative: modern incinerators, sleek European-style waste-to-energy plants, less urban sprawl dedicated to garbage mountains. There's just one problem—the premise is fundamentally wrong, and the City of Calgary has no intention of changing course.

Here's the reality: Calgary's three landfills—Shepard, East Calgary, and Spyhill—have an estimated 35 years of combined life remaining as of 2018. That's not a typo. Decades, not months. And just this past December, City Council approved the 2026 budget with a $37 million capital investment specifically to increase landfill capacity. Translation? The city isn't running out of room. It's actively expanding what it already has.

The Composting Bet That Just Paid Off

While Edmonton flirts with waste-to-energy plants paired with carbon capture—the Alberta government poured $6.1 million into a feasibility study for a facility slated to open in 2027—Calgary doubled down on a different horse. The Calgary Composting Facility just wrapped an $88 million expansion at the end of 2025, ballooning from an initial $50 million budget due to post-pandemic inflation and labour costs. The facility now processes 160,000 tonnes of organic waste annually, up 60,000 tonnes from before, and is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 64,000 tonnes per year.

That's not a stopgap. That's a statement of intent. Calgary's waste hierarchy puts reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting at the top of the pyramid. Incineration—even the high-tech, carbon-capturing kind—sits firmly at the bottom, flagged as a 'low priority' and a last resort for residual waste. A 2018 City report explicitly stated that waste-to-energy wasn't required to hit the 70% diversion target by 2025, and any serious consideration would come well beyond that timeline.

Why Calgarians Are Paying More for the Same Bins

If you noticed an extra $5.29 tacked onto your monthly waste and recycling bill in 2026, now you know why. That fee hike—part of a broader $9.79 increase in City services for a typical homeowner—is funding both the composting facility's operational pressures and the landfill capacity boost. It's the unglamorous reality of a diversion-first strategy: composting infrastructure costs money, and ratepayers foot the bill.

But here's the trade-off Calgary is banking on: by prioritizing organics diversion and extending landfill lifespans, the city avoids the upfront capital and long-term operational complexity of waste-to-energy plants. Incinerators require massive infrastructure, strict emissions regulations, and consistent waste feedstock—not to mention the political optics of 'burning garbage' in a city still grappling with air quality concerns tied to oil and gas.

The Edmonton Experiment Next Door

Edmonton's waste-to-energy pilot, backed by Varme Energy and aiming to divert over 200,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste annually while capturing 185,000 tonnes of CO2, is a fascinating provincial experiment. But it's also a cautionary tale. The project is still in the front-end engineering phase, years away from operational reality, and hinges on carbon capture technology that remains expensive and unproven at scale in the waste sector.

Calgary, meanwhile, is betting that the most efficient way to deal with waste is to generate less of it in the first place—and turn what's left into compost, not electricity. Whether that philosophy holds as the city grows past 1.6 million residents and land pressures intensify remains an open question. But for now, the incinerator Reddit dreams of? Not on the City's roadmap.

The landfills aren't full. The composting plant just got bigger. And Calgary's waste strategy remains stubbornly rooted in diversion, not combustion—no matter how sleek the European sales pitch gets.