Kimberley City Council has voted in favour of implementing a curbside recycling program in the community later this year, but passed on curbside organics for the time being.
Mayor Don McCormick said the program will be beneficial to the community, as it will incur no costs to taxpayers.
“Between a grant from the Regional District and revenues we’ll get from Recycle BC, this is basically a revenue, or cost-neutral item. In other words, it’s not going to cost us any money, to the city or taxpayers, to move to curbside recycling,” said McCormick.
Once implemented, residents will be able to recycle anything that could normally go into the yellow bins placed around the community.
However, some other items will still need to be taken to the local transfer station for recycling.
“For zippered bags, flexible packaging, styrofoam and those sorts of things, they will still need to be taken out to the recycle depot,” said McCormick.
The bins which will be distributed to Kimberely residents can hold up to 240 liters, twice the size of the garbage bins.
“If you take a look at the average household, the sheer volume of recyclables is two or three times that of the garbage that we’re putting on the curbside.,” explained McCormick. “As in other communities, you’ll see that recycle bins tend to be bigger. In our particular case, the garbage is 120 liters and the recycling will be 240 liters.”
The City plans to launch the curbside recycling program by mid to late summer.
In the same meeting, City Council also discussed the potential of introducing curbside organics disposal.
However, Council voted to differ discussion on the matter for the time being.
“From a dollars and cents point of view, it’s actually going to cost money to implement that program, we’re not exactly sure what the volume of that program is going to be, and implementing two major programs at a time wasn’t something that Council felt was a feasible thing to do,” said McCormick. “We want to make sure we get the curbside recycling done first, then we can take a look at whether or not curbside organics makes sense”
The option to introduce curbside organics is still open, but as Mayor McCormick mentioned, the City wants to make sure the new recycling program is handled well first.
McCormick noted that some members of the community are already taking care of their own organic kitchen waste by using it in composting.