Efficient Garbage Collection

At the last Council Meeting on September 7, Council discussed a proposal for a more efficient garbage collection. After a lengthy and healthy discussion, which included all Council members present, District staff and the Regional District manager who is in charge of this project, Council decided to approve the improvements in principle and to defer the matter of funding to the budget process. Not everybody was in agreement and some valid concerns about the system were raised. There was a big article in the Kelowna Daily Courier about this topic, which can be found at http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/top_story.php?id=292967&type=Local.

I'll try to summarize the issue and provide the information we gave Council.

The Regional District of Central Okanagan, in concurrence and with the approval of the four member municipalities (Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland and West Kelowna), implemented an automated and diversified garbage collection system for the whole Central Okanagan. Each household was provided with a cart including a radio transmitter-receiver called RFID that can be read wirelessly with a handheld reader. So each cart belongs to a particular household/owner. After a few months of garbage collection, it was noted that people still throw the wrong garbage in the wrong bins and the manual sorting of the 'contamination' (a fancy word for the wrong mixing issue) is costly (in fact very costly) and inefficient. The 'offenders' are advised and life goes on.

The words 'costly' and 'inefficient' are not a good mix, especially when it comes down to taxpayers' dollars. So the Regional District staff found out that by expanding the RFID system or, in other words, expanding the capacity of the chip to include more data, and specifically the type of garbage dumped in the bin, the contamination management can become cost effective and efficient for two reasons: 1) the annual cost of the technological expansion is about $1.60 per cart (yes, you read it right: one dollar and sixty cents); and 2) contamination is spotted on site and 'offenders' are advised immediately (I believe the contaminated bin would not be unloaded of its 'cargo').

Additional immediate benefits from expansion of the RFID system include the ability to do targeted education with individual residents. Past Waste Reduction Office education campaigns have been done through the media with the hope that the targeted minority will be reached. This approach has been ineffective in addressing recent issues including yard waste contamination and carts in bike lanes both of which required door-to-door education with individual residents in order to show improvement. In both examples the data necessary to do targeted door-to-door education was unavailable and the message was addressed to entire streets with bike lanes and the entire region in the case of yard waste contamination.

Finally, the expanded RFID system puts the technology in place for implementing a user pay system where households are charged based on how frequently their cart is tipped. This type of system is more equitable than the current flat-rate system. Where it has been implemented, the user pay model has proven to result in significant waste reduction efforts and behaviour changes. The realization of a user pay model would require additional investments in District financial and customer billing systems to accommodate the change.

The concern is about privacy. How far would we go with the 'big brother' technology and are we sure it would be used properly? Staff feel comfortable with the this solutions and ensure that it will be properly and effectively utilized. However, at the end of the day, the decision remains with the policy makers.

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