Residents of highrise apartment buildings and condominiums will soon participate in Toronto's green bin program.

Toronto Mayor David Miller announced on Wednesday the organic waste collection program, which has been offered to residents of single-family homes since 2005, will be rolled out to the city's 500,000 highrise residents.

The program will be adopted over the next 18 months, with 300 buildings added each month, said Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, chair of the city's public works committee.

Each resident will be provided with a green plastic bucket for their organic waste and trucks will arrive at the buildings to pick up the waste weekly, De Baeremaeker said.

"Everybody in the city, whether you live in a home or a highrise or a condo, has a green bin and you can give us your banana peels and your baby's diapers," he said.

Building managers will be able to decide if the waste — which can include vegetables, meat and dairy products — will be placed in available garbage chutes or if tenants will have to take the buckets down to the garbage room, De Baeremaeker said.

According to the city, organic waste accounts for about 30 per cent of a typical household's waste.

A condominium in North York has been used as a pilot site for the project.

Sue Kim, who recently moved into the building, said she appreciates being able to dispose of organic waste.

"I used to live in the apartment. We didn't divide anything," Kim said. "We like to use it because green environment is better."

At Kim's condominum she takes the waste to a garbage room, which has instructions for the sorting posted in English, Chinese, Korean and Russian.

"Before we go to bed we just come here and then throw all the garbage," Kim said.

Some critics have labelled the effort to bring the green bins to 5,000 buildings as overly ambitious, said De Baeremaeker. But he said he is confident after the bins are provided people will use the program, which is believed to be the largest of its kind in North America.

About 95 per cent of single-family households in the city have begun using the service, he said, adding he expects the highrise tenants will follow suit.

"We know that residents living in apartments, condos and co-ops want to recycle and do the best for our environment. Participating in the green bin program is one way they can reduce the amount of garbage they send to landfill," he said.

The success of the program is critical to the city reaching its goal of diverting 70 per cent of its waste from landfills by 2010.

"If we're successful rolling out this program, we will divert 6,000 garbage trucks every single year. Instead of going into a garbage dump we'll go into a composting facility," De Baeremaeker said.

That would account for about 30,000 tonnes of organic waste annually, he said.