New facility will increase curbside organics collection in the Cowichan Valley

Residents of the Cowichan Valley Regional District will be seeing more curbside collection of organic waste such as kitchen scraps and yard waste, thanks to a new facility to be built with $6 million in federal funds received last year.

The facility will be at Duncan’s Bings Creek Recycling Centre, with construction expected to start this year and be complete in 2025.

Recycling will be expanded, as well, and there will be upgrades to a service road and stormwater management.

Organic waste will be managed in a “more environmentally sound manner” than it is in the smaller, temporary structure that is being replaced, said Ilse Sarady, the district’s senior manager of recycling and solidwaste management.

The federal money for the work came from the federal Strategic Priorities Fund.

Organics are currently collected from curbside by municipalities in the CVRD and Cowichan Tribes, and the new facility will allow the service to be offered to electoral areas and other local First Nations, Sarady said.

The Ministry of Environment said last April that organics collection would be added for 14,000 households, and contributed $1.9 million through its CleanBC Organic Infrastructure and Collection Program.

Organics can also be brought to centrally located bins in the regional district, but more curbside collection will make things “so much easier” for people who are doing that, said CVRD spokesperson Kris Schumacher.

Currently, about 33 per cent of the district’s waste is organic material, and since there is no landfill in the district, garbage is taken more than 700 kilometres away to a landfill in Washington state.

Decisions still have to be made about what to do with the added organic material that will be collected through the project, whether local composting or something else, Schumacher said.

Jared Qwustenuxun Williams of Qwustenuxun Consulting has been named as the Indigenous liaison for the project, while Stantec will oversee design and construction.

Working with Indigenous communities is part of reconciliation efforts, as set out in the CVRD’s current Corporate Strategic Plan, Sarady said.

Federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson said the project will mean that the CVRD can better manage its waste while preparing for population growth.

“Proper waste collection, sorting and disposal is critical to protecting our environment,” he said.