Regional District of North Okanagan director Akbal Mund is seeking bi-weekly waste collection.
“We need to start to think about climate change,” Mund said. “Let’s take that truck off the road for a week.”
Currently, trash is picked up every week but Mund said he believes most families don’t require that much.
“There are lots of jurisdictions that don’t do (mandatory) collection,” chief administrative officer David Sewell said.
Salmon Arm, for instance, said goodbye to weekly garbage collection in July after accepting a proposal from Armstrong-based SCV Contractors Corp. That contract split the waste collection into three streams — solid, recyclable and food-organics. Pickup for solid refuse switched from weekly to bi-weekly; recyclables switched to bi-weekly and phased out single-use bags; and food waste moved to a weekly pickup schedule collected from wheeled carts/cans.
The newly added food-waste collection service was put in place to reduce the amount of waste directed to the landfill.
The National Zero Waste Council found the average Canadian household in 2017 discarded 140 kilograms of food at an estimated cost of $1,100 each year. That amounts to almost 2.2 million tonnes of edible food ringing in more than $17 billion.
The RDNO board will write a letter to member municipalities asking that mandatory bi-weekly waste collection be considered.
— with files from Lachlan Labere and the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce
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