Commercial and municipal haulers will now be required to recycle cardboard throughout the Thompson Nicola Regional District.

TNRD Waste Reduction Coordinator Andrew Roebbelen says effective September 1 people may be fined if these large operators have over 10 per cent of corrugated cardboard in their load.

“It’s essentially boxes, shipping boxes, Amazon boxes, all of the typical cardboard boxes, even pizza boxes it’s the stuff with that squiggle in the middle part of the corrugated cardboard.

Earlier this year, the TNRD implemented a bylaw to reduce the amount of cardboard in landfill. However, enforcement is now in effect for large loads.

Roebbelen adds that over the last three months, the district had introduced mock ticketing for the new mandatory bylaw, which he says has been well received by the public.

“Bylaw officers have been out and they have been inspecting loads and I’m letting customers like commercial customers and municipalities know if their loads are above the 10 per cent thresholds and what their relative fine would be for that.”

He says fines may only be issued by TNRD staff and bylaw officers and not by staff at the disposal site.

“We are talking about large commercial loads, things that are coming from municipalities, possibly from their curbside collection, or from front-end bins like you would get at multi-residential buildings or from stores and other kinds of places.”

With that, Adriana Mailloux, TNRD Manager of Solid Waste and Recycling encourages people in the community to work with waste haulers to reduce or eliminate recyclables from their garbage.

“The intention of this bylaw is to reduce the amount of material that is being landfilled that can easily be recycled. Similar bylaws are in place in many parts of B.C.”

While the bylaw only applies to cardboard, for now, the TNRD says it could be expanded to other commonly-recycled items like paper, plastic, glass, and metal in the future.