A Kamloops woman is looking to help bring a curbside composting program to the city.

Addie De Candole says 65 per cent of British Columbia is already composting, including Salmon Arm who just launched their own program at the beginning of the month. She believes it’s about time that Kamloops starts doing it as well. “We want to decrease our waste. So, what it looks like in other cities, in Salmon Arm especially, is you put out your recycling bin, your garbage bin and there’s another bin for food scraps for your compost.”

De Candole says the province wants to decrease the amount of waste we generate on a per person basis. “There’s a lot of case studies. It’s not like we need to start from scratch. There’s a lot of communities doing it already. And the province, they would like waste per person to be down to about 350 kilos per year, Kamloops right now, we’re double that.”

De Candole has launched an online petition to launch a curbside compost collection service in the city. About 750 people have supported the initiative at the time of this writing. She says compost is a really great way to reduce the amount of waste we produce. “43 per cent of what is going to the landfill right now is compostable. It’s lumber from construction waste and food scraps. So if we compost half of our garbage, it is compostable, then we’ll reach those provincial targets and targets within the city.”

By Jefff Andreas