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MORE COMPOST, LESS LANDFILL

City of Kamloops seeks input on curbside organic waste collection

Apr 13, 2021 | 11:13 AM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops process for bringing curbside organics waste collection to residents has moved to its next step.

The city has a survey available for residents on the Let’s Talk Kamloops page, as it seeks input on what citizens hope to see from the program. Staff are also planning a pair of virtual information sessions — one for Wednesday, April 14th starting at noon, and the other for the evening of April 29th — to answer questions and hear what residents have to say. This is all ahead of the curbside organics waste collection pilot program planned for September.

“We want to use the survey to inform where we’re going to do the pilot program,” Solid Waste Services Analyst Marcia Dick explains. “We’ll be piloting organic waste collection in about five different neighbourhoods. We want to test organic waste collection in areas where we expect high volumes, but also in areas where we expect low volumes so we can understand potentially how much we’ll be collecting in a full-scale rollout. Will help to inform our costs and collection model and frequency.”

The survey will be available for residents until May 18. Dick says the city hopes to engage with as many residents as possible during this phase of the process, in order to help plan for the pilot project, which could begin as early as September 2021.

“We had some questions and answers open on our Let’s Talk page, and we received over a hundred different questions,” Dick says. “Most of them were around the same themes. Those themes are what helped us build our survey, so a lot of questions about wildlife, container sizes, frequency of collection and how much it will cost. Those are questions that have helped us design the survey. We want to get more information from as much of the community as we can, really.”

To take the survey, or for more information on the virtual information session, you can visit LetsTalk.Kamloops.ca