By Jill Sperling

Kamloops residents encouraged to re-use during Waste Reduction Week

Oct 16, 2018 | 4:02 PM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops is hoping to get residents thinking about how to reduce the amount of materials they throw away.

“Waste is a really weird thing, because as you put it into the bin you’ve forgotten about it, you’ve moved on with your day,” said the City of Kamloops’ Sustainability educator Jaimi Garbutt. “So, the point of Waste Reduction Week is to really bring that to light and to really encourage people to look at their consumption and the way that they’re getting rid of their materials as well.”

Garbutt says people should consider trading in their single use items for re-usable containers.

“Re-using items is another great tool,” she said. “We really want to focus on the re-usable items. So we want to look for re-usable containers, re-usable coffee cups, re-usable water bottles, anything that can be re-used more than once.”

In 2017 the city buried around 700 kilograms of waste per person, up from 650 in 2016 and 507 in 2015.

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“There’s three different sources of waste,” said Solid Waste Services Analyst Marcia Dick, “we have our household residential waste, commercial waste, and then we have the demolition and construction sector. So, residential waste accounts for about 25 per cent of what’s being buried, whereas the commercial sector is about 45 per cent, and the DLC (demolition, land clearing and construction) is another 30 per cent.”

During Waste Reduction Week the city is targeting household waste, showing how individuals can reduce the amount of garbage and recycling they are producing.

“We can only really control our personal selves, so what we do at home, that’s kind of that 25 per cent that we’re targeting right now is what we can do individually,” Dick said.

Garbutt suggests picking one simple way to reduce waste and making it a year-round habit.

“Waste reduction week is just one week out of the year,” she said, “we really want people to incorporate these behaviours into their daily lives so we can do it year round so we can make a difference every single day.”

by Jill Sperling

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Kamloops residents encouraged to re-use during Waste Reduction Week

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