Organics carts are set to be picked up bi-weekly in Kamloops over the next few months, starting this week.

Council voted to keep the plan to see organics collected bi-weekly between December and February, with weekly organics collections returning for the rest of the year.

However, with that schedule, many people in Kamloops will go between garbage/organic collection as well as recycling collection.

City staff say it is due to December 25/26 and January 1 being statutory holidays.

Many on Kamloops Council raised their concerns with the waste collection gap at Tuesday’s meeting, with Councillor Katie Neustater saying 19 days is too long for homeowners to have no solid waste pick-up, especially during the holidays.

“We cannot ask households to go 19 days without pick-up. I realize in an ideal world where everyone understands the systems and operates within them and does the exact right thing – that would be okay – but that is just not human nature,” she said.

“If you have a family, a household, you are bringing people in – you have all that waste – the question – which do we pick up- we have not heard that from the community – that is the organics. It is the stinky stuff that is what we are talking about that needs to be disposed of more often.”

However, staff stated they would not be able to do an extra day of pick-ups over the holidays this year due to a few reasons, including staffing challenges and uncertainties around which waste stream is disposed of the most – whether it be garbage, recycling, or composting.”

Neustater says while she understands staff cannot add an extra collection day in this holiday season, she “strongly encourages” staff to come up with options to ensure it does not happen again.

“I will be the first to admit, I did not see there was such a major gap in pick-ups during the holiday month; we (as council) wear that every bit as much as staff might for not realizing that would be a mistake to make for our community (to have 19 days without curbside collection) but we certainly do not want to do it again.”

Meanwhile, Environment Services Manager Glen Farrow assures his staff noticed a drop in the amount of material collected in recent months, when compared to the summer, mainly due to there being less yard waste.

“We also see other things based on diet and how people are eating, you are not eating as much corn or watermelon in January and February as you did through June and July so we are seeing significant shifts in that based on the pilot.”

Aside from less waste and cost savings by reducing the number of times organics are collected over the next few months, Farrow says it’ll help once the snow flies.

“The other key component is having six less solid waste vehicles on the road every other week in the busiest snow clearing months of December, January, and February with constraints on our shop and everything, came into the decision making as well.”

Garbage and Recycling will continue to be picked up bi-weekly for all of 2024.

However, Farrow says if people have too much garbage, recycling, or organic waste, there are options to get additional carts to be dropped off at their homes.

“Part of the reason why the fees for recycling and composting are so much lower is so that if you do not want to participate in our programs – you get the largest garbage carts, pay the largest fee, and do your own thing without participating in our programs,” said Farrow.

“It’s not ideal but that option is there and you will pay for it accordingly.”

Farrow says there have been close to 500 size changes for carts since the organics pilot came into effect, noting they have also had people get additional recycling and garbage carts as well.

We are shifting into winter and the holiday season.
With that, we have some key information on solid waste collection to share with residents on:

➡️organics collection shifting to a biweekly winter schedule
➡️the implementation of dual pass collection across all zones
➡️the… pic.twitter.com/248ECGPuef

— City of Kamloops (@cityofkamloops) December 6, 2023