Curbside compost pickup confirmed

Summerland’s mayor is confident community members will come to appreciate curbside pickup of organic food waste just the same as millions of other British Columbians who have already made the switch.

“I know change is difficult. I know this is a change for Summerland. But, the reality is, in the Okanagan we’ve been lagging behind when it comes to this,” said Mayor Doug Holmes on Tuesday night following a unanimous vote of council to launch the new service April 2.

“This isn’t cutting-edge stuff. This is widespread all around B.C., all around the country, and one of the advantages of coming to it late is we were able to learn from the experiences of other places, and see what works and what doesn’t work.”

As of April, food waste – including meat, bones, fruits, vegetables, cooked food and soiled paper products -- will be tossed in yard waste carts and picked up weekly along with regular recycling.

Regular trash will only be picked up every other week, rather than weekly as it is now. Regular recycling will continue to be picked up every other week.

Responding to early concerns about potential odours from stored food waste and overflowing garbage bins, Summerland’s director of works and utilities urged patience.

“We recommend that residents give the new collection model a try for a month or two and see how little garbage may be produced when the food waste and full recycling materials are removed from their garbage,” said Mitchell.

He also noted his inquiries showed that 85% of the B.C. residents who currently receive food waste collection only toss their trash every two weeks.

Mitchell drew on the experience of New Westminster, specifically, which saw a 43% reduction in garbage tonnage in 2012 following introduction of food waste collection.

(Summerland’s goal is to achieve a 40% reduction, which is meant to extend the life of the district’s landfill and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.)

Finally, he noted the district is preparing an extensive communications effort to educate residents about the changes, plus planning to distribute small “kitchen catchers” to each home in which people can store their food scraps before dumping them in the green bin.

Despite some initial reservations about only picking up garbage every other week, Coun. Richard Barkwill said he was relieved to hear the system works elsewhere.

“People who I know have come to Summerland and seen that there isn’t this composting available, and it bothers the heck out of them to have to put the food (waste) in the garbage,” said Barkwill.

The program has the potential to divert 700 tonnes of waste annually from being buried at the Summerland landfill -- about 40% of all trash it receives in a year -- and reduce the community’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1,000 tonnes, according to Mitchell’s report.

It also noted 3.7 million residents of British Columbia -- roughly two-thirds of the provincial population -- currently receive curbside pickup of food waste. Most of the communities with service are on the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, but Interior cities like Trail and Kamloops and Hope are also on the list.

Officials in Summerland have been working towards curbside pickup of kitchen waste since 2019, when the community received a provincial grant worth nearly $1 million to cover twothirds of the cost of creating a composting facility at the local landfill, which opened in September 2023.

There will be no additional charge for Summerland residents at first -- although the district will see its costs rise about $30,000 annually