City wants compost site before scraps get picked up

Councillors debating merits of collecting food waste at the curb

The viability of an organics recycling program across greater Kelowna will be considered in the months ahead.

But a key challenge before any such curbside-collection initiative could get underway is deciding where the large composting facility that would be required might be located.

“Of course, at the end of the day, where you site a recycling facility for organics, that might be one of our problems,” Coun. Gail Given, who is also chairwoman of the regional district board, said Monday.

“Because they are quite intrusive in neighbourhoods.” Nevertheless, a study on organics recycling is among the objectives outlined in the regional district’s work plan for 2021, Given said.

As he has in the past, Coun. Ryan Donn raised the issue at Monday’s meeting, saying he had heard from many people who want to place food scraps and other compostable material in a curtsied cart, alongside containers for garbage and recyclables.

Donn noted he is not in a position to advocate for the issue because he is not on the regional board. That is because he is an employee of the town of Lake Country and provincial law prohibits people who work for one level of government from being a representative on a municipal council that provides services in the area.

“There is a strong desire now for how we deal with organics,” said Donn, who once brought up the issue after returning from a trip to his native Scotland and seeing how widespread organics recycling is there.

But when Donn first brought up the issue, in August 2017, council heard that there was a large backlog of compost, for which there was no market, developing at landfills across B.C.

“There is a glut of compost within the province,” Peter Rotheisler, then head of the Central Okanagan’s waste reduction program, told council at the time.

“There’s been so many new composting programs developed, and they are increasing at such a rapid pace because they are bringing in all these new feedstocks that can be included within them, whether it’s biosolids or additional yard and garden waste. It’s creating a large problem that isn’t necessarily talked a lot about,” Rotheisler added. “You have this massive inventory of compost that’s sitting there that isn’t being used for the intent that everybody thinks it’s used for.”

The glut of compost was one reason that local officials were not, in 2017, advocating for a separate curbside pick-up for organic waste, like food scraps.