Creston may adopt a curbside garbage, recycling and food waste pick-up program by 2022.
Manager of Engineering Colin Farynowski illustrated the pitfalls of the current system which costs roughly $90 a year per household and does not include systems which would reduce harmful agents affecting the environment.
“Some of the benefit? Reduce greenhouse emissions. We preserve landfill capacity, landfill leachate, these are all environmental issues. We don’t want the leachate contaminating our ground water and we don’t want the methane basically exposed to our atmosphere.”
Due to increasing leachate at the landfill and forecasting a higher tipping fee, the cost will likely rise to above $120 per household in the near future based of Farynowski’s calculations.
He proposed an aerated windrow compost system at the landfill to council on March 19, 2019. Food waste and organics would be collected weekly and garbage and recycling would be collected bi-weekly. The Town of Creston is still waiting on Recycle BC to bring curbside recycling to Creston, though Creston does fit the criteria for the service. He estimated that landfill waste could be cut by over 50%and the total cost per household would be $149.
Plans are still in its earliest stages and the Town of Creston would be working in conjunction with the RDCK. Factors like which bins to use and which trucks to purchase are still on the drawing table.