The City of Castlegar paid $24,000 in extra tipping fees in the first half of this year because of contaminated residential organics loads, council has been told.
City staff are proposing to crack down on repeat offenders by auditing organics bins and placing stickers on those bins with contaminants inside. The stickers will explain what is not allowed and where it should go instead. Those carts won’t be collected unless the contaminants are removed.
Crystal Bazar, the city’s assistant manager of operations, said in a presentation that almost one in five loads from Castlegar is being rejected from the compost stream and sent instead to the landfill.
The Regional District of Central Kootenay amended its fee schedule this year so that clean organics cost $109 per tonne, but rejected loads cost $355.
Bazar shared a photo of some of the items that have been inexplicably placed in organics bins: a plastic toilet seat. The remnants of a ukelele. Golf cubs. A pillow. Glass bottles. A wooden cutting board.
Bazar said while the city has the power to fine residents, staff hope the audit program will get results on its own.
“Our goal is to provide more education and support for those residents that require it,” she said. “We don’t know necessarily why the organics are being contaminated. In some cases it could just be a lack of understanding of the program [or] potentially it could be intentional.”
Bazar said they do have some idea from contractor Waste Management who the repeat offenders are, but that has not stopped contaminants from entering the organics stream. She added they are trying to figure out if there are seasonal trends.
When the amount of organic waste is higher during spring and fall cleanups, several trucks might unload into a bin, and then a single contaminated load results in the entire bin being rejected, she said.
Weekly organics pick-up in Castlegar began in 2023. Bazar said before that time, it was believed that 40 per cent of residential garbage was organic material, 37 per cent was recycling, and only 23 per cent was actual garbage. Since the program began, about 49 per cent of the waste stream is going to organics, 15 per cent to recycling, and 36 per cent to garbage.
The city is looking into improving its recycling numbers by expanding its curbside collection program to accept things like flexible plastics, which currently have to be taken to a depot. Bazar said they hope to hire a consultant near the end of this year to begin research. She said they will also have to work with Waste Management on some of the challenges they will face in collecting those additional items.
She expected it would come with a rate increase and that council will have to make a decision sometime in 2027.
