City crews in Kamloops collected substantially less recycling on the curb last year than a year earlier.

A report from city staff says 24 per cent less curbside recycling was picked up in 2018 compared to 2017, which is a drop of nearly 1,500 tonnes.

Civic operations director Jen Fretz says city crews are clamping down on not accepting curbside recycling that is contaminated. She says the move has a lot to do with changes at RecycleBC; shipping containers with recycling have long been shipped to China in containers to be reused, but in reality those often had high amounts of contaminated recycling which China now doesn’t accept and ships back to North America.

“We’re working daily with residents and with property owners to try and make sure that people understand what it means when they just haphazardly throw something into their recycling cart or bin that doesn’t belong there,” Fretz says.

“It’s not a matter of ‘out of site, out of mind, I’ve done my part, I’ve recycled.’ Unfortunately, in most cases that material ends up going to the landfill.

“We do have an education campaign that’s ongoing, but we also hope to be coming before council in 2019, 2020 with respect to both commercial recycling as well as the potential for organics diversion at the curb.”

City councillor Kathy Sinclair acknowledged the drop in recycling during this week’s council meeting and said it was “discouraging.”

In total 4,682 tonnes of recycling was picked up at the curbsides in Kamloops last year, compared to 6,144 tonnes in 2017 and 6.259 in 2016.