The town of Assiniboia will be doing a free pickup of compostable material Thursday.

Assiniboia Mayor Bob Himbault explains what can be picked up.

“It’s primarily leaves and grass clippings,” he said. “That was the main key, but you certainly can put in other materials like potato peels and other garden waste.

While garden waste is acceptable for pickup, the bags must be clear in order to be picked up and those bags must be free of other kinds of garbage like weeds, meats and animal feces.

“I know there’s people in the fall, where they have ornamental crab apple trees, and they rake them up and they put them in a bag. Those are ideal. You want that stuff. Leaves and grass, they don’t compost very easy. You need other organic matter in there to break that down.”

Town wide pickup of the material will be used to help keep garbage out of the landfill, but the compost will also be used by the town, said Himbault.

“Our crew did invent a screening unit, so once we have enough good compost, we screen it off,” he said. “We’ve established a little bit of a pile.... but we just use it for our own use. We do it in the community garden and in some of our other sites.

The initiative keeps this kind of debris out of their landfill and also the town will use the compost on their community garden.

Both the west and east sides of Assiniboia will have their material picked up Thursday, then, every second Thursday after that.