RDEK board chair Rob Gay says yellow recycling bins will be a thing of the past as the district looks to evolve its waste management.
He says they’ve served their purpose but are getting obsolete due to curbside recycling.
“It’s been over 20 years and people have done a good job but as we’ve evolved in waste management we’ve seen Cranbrook, Kimberley and Sparwwod are moving to Recycle BC where you can have your recycling picked up curbside,” he said.
Currently, most yellow bins are used by businesses but Gay says it’s costing residents too much money to keep it going.
“The only yellow bins are used by the industrial and commercial folks. Those bins are behind many of the businesses and that is paid for predominately by the residents of the East Kootenay,” he said.
“Businesses are basically getting assistance from us and for next year we looked at the cost and to do the yellow bin program is roughly $2 million. We’ve seen the residential evolve and it’s time for the businesses to do something.”
It will still take some time for the bins to disappear.
“We’ve given staff a year to do that and personally I think our businesses and the large waste carriers in our community will have to get innovative and come up with a solution on their own,” said Gay.
“There may be cases where we keep some of the yellow bins, but we’d like for them to be phased out. It’s going to be a really big move and I think there will probably be some fallback over it but it’s time to move forward.”
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