The City of Kamloops is in the process of implementing fines for some of the worst repeat offenders who continuously contaminate recycling carts and bins.
Repeat offenders will be fined $100 to help offset any penalties that the city may get from Recycle BC, although there have been no fines issued to this date.
Streets and Environmental Services Manager Glen Farrow says the city is hoping for recycling contamination levels to be around 3 per cent, instead of the current 10 per cent.
“We’re seeing things like mattresses, couches, bags of garbage, grass clippings – that’s what we are really targetting in this effort,” he said. “It’s not the smaller, an extra plastic straw or a few plastic bags in the recycling. That’s a concern on one level, but what we are really targetting here is the excess garbage that we are seeing in our mix.”
Farrow says area with lots of student housing is a challenge mostly because of the high turnover among tenants.
“Around student housing and that’s a challenge where every couple of months you could have different residents coming in,” Farrow noted.
“Getting that communication out clearly to a new group of individuals tends to be a challenge. We see a lot of contamination in the multi family sectors, so we have started shifting away from dumpsters or bins to containerized carts that a single family dwelling would have.”
The fine structure has been in place since 2008, and the city has been a member of Recycle BC since 2017, and staff have been monitoring carts and bins in all neighbourhoods since then.
“Based on where we are today, the risk of having service level failure credits coming our way from Recycle BC, you know based on the global markets right across the country, we’re feeling that pinch now in Kamloops to ensure that we are not just throwing anything and everything that we are hoping to recycle into our recycling carts, but it needs to be a clean product,” said Farrow.
City staff are encouraging people to use the free Waste Wise app to let them know where items can be placed or taken to ensure it ends up in the right place for disposal.
(Photo: pixabay)