City of Kamloops officials re-educating residents on waste management

“I think residents are trying to do the right thing and recycle these items by putting them in the recycling cart,” Dick says. “Unfortunately recycling collection is only for a limited amount of materials.”

Things like lithium-ion batteries, ammunition, un-emptied pressurized containers, and needles have caused problems on a local and provincial level.

“We take things like hairspray and shaving foam in the aerosol containers. But they need to be fully emptied,” explains Dick. “Because even (with) just a little bit in there- it’s driven over by a piece of equipment, and then boom!”

Environmental Services Supervisor Allan Michener says the issue with getting rid of questionable materials in a regular landfill, or recycling load is when those items interact with other materials, or are compacted.

“So whether it’s an explosive event, a fire event, or even just a chemical interaction with a landfill employee or a recycling employee, we want to avoid those situations wherever possible.”

Improper disposal of materials can be dangerous. Case in point, recently a fire had to be extinguished at the Mission Flats facility.

“We weren’t able to actually pinpoint the definitive cause of that fire that happened August 6th,” says Michener. “But based on what our landfill contractors have seen over the last number of months, they’re seeing a large number of cell phone batteries being thrown in to the waste stream. Unfortunately, with some of the loads, even though staff here do a phenomenal job of trying to screen that material out, they can’t see everything.”

Part of waste diversion, Michener says the city’s staging area is meant to determine what can be dropped off, and where it needs to be taken.

“So examples of what we can take here at the Mission Flats landfill- propane tanks, gasoline if it’s coming in a jerry can or an approved container, certain electronics, that have hazardous components, we can take those here as well,” he says. “Items that we can’t take are things like used motor oil, certain types of batteries- like lithium ion batteries. We will try to pull them out of someone’s load to help them out but ultimately we would like to see those items taken to off-site locations.”

Now, Dick says the City wants residents to know that even if the landfill does not accept an item, there are many other places that can.

“We have a Waste Wise app, where people can go and look up if they have a propane tank, what they should do with that,” she says. “Or if you have one of those helium tanks used at birthday parties, we see a lot of those in the recycling stream, just use the app, or phone the city and we’ll look it up for you.”

Moving forward, the hope is that recycling and landfill facility employees can continue managing and sorting waste safely.

by Dylana Milobar

City of Kamloops officials re-educating residents on waste management

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