• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Residents are encouraged to keep recycling and organics out of the garbage and to use the recycling and organics carts for as much of that material as possible.
• Use the Waste Wise Kamloops app to find out how to divert hundreds of items from the garbage.
• Items in good condition can be donated for reuse.
• Check out waste reduction tips at Kamloops.ca/WasteReduction to learn how you can reduce the amount of waste you generate.
• Excess garbage that does not fit into your garbage cart can be dropped off at one of the City’s landfills (additional disposal fees will apply).

Please note that all curbside material must be contained in a cart with a closed lid. Overflowing carts or excess materials placed next to the carts will not be collected.

All regular household garbage may be placed inside the carts. Anything that is placed inside the cart must be able to fall freely when dumped.

Search the Waste Wise Kamloops app to find out how to properly dispose of hundreds of products.

Clean cardboard and newsprint are prohibited in your garbage cart, and should be placed in your recycling cart. Other items that should not be placed in the garbage carts include:

• Dirt
• Concrete
• Flammable, Toxic or Hazardous Materials
• Paint
• Sod
• Grass clippings
• Bricks
• Hot ashes or Charcoal
• Needles
• Rocks
• Metal
• Construction and materials
• Solvents
• Offal waste
• Large amounts of pet waste

Residents are encouraged to take advantage of the current recycling options available to them to reduce the amount of garbage they need to place at the curb. 

Recycle BC Program  Landfill, Recycling, and Yard Waste Sites

If you have difficulty moving the cart to your collection point, you may apply for City assistance. If you medically qualify, City crews will move your cart to the collection point and return it at the end of collection day. Application forms are available by calling 250-828-3461.

Large amounts of yard and green waste can be taken to the Bunker Road and Barnhartvale Yard Waste Sites or to the Cinnamon Ridge Compost Facility. Grass clippings are banned from curbside garbage collection.

Small amounts of yard or plant waste can go in the organics cart, including: 

• grass clippings, leaves, cones, needles, and berries
• plants, tree fruits, and flowers
• small branches, twigs, and prunings cut to 30 cm long/2 cm diameter
• potting soil and untreated mulch
• hay, straw, and coconut planter liners

Search the Waste Wise Kamloops app to find out how to best dispose of your yard waste.

Yard Waste Site locations

Every household has different needs depending on household size and overall sorting, recycling, and composting (organics) habits. The 245 L garbage cart is the most common size among residents and holds the equivalent of 3.2 bags of garbage.

Residents that regularly use their curbside recycling cart to recycle paper packaging and products, plastic packaging, and metal containers, and use their curbside organics cart for food scraps and yard waste, may find that the 180 L cart (equivalent to 2.5 bags of garbage) provides sufficient capacity.

The smallest 120 L cart is for residents that do not generate much garbage. These carts, which hold the equivalent of 1.5 bags of garbage, are more suited to single occupants, seniors, and those who generate little waste by consistently recycling, composting, and managing yard waste.

Cart sizes and annual costs

Dual Pass Collection
The City began a dual pass system in 2023. In dual pass collection, one truck collects one type of material and a second truck collects a different type of material, as opposed to a single truck collecting two types of material separated with a divider.

Advantages to a dual pass system:

• There is less risk of contamination in the loads (e.g. garbage in the organics).
• The total distance travelled is significantly less as each truck only needs to travel to one specific location—the recycling depot, the landfill, or the organics transfer facility.
• Trucks don’t need to tip as often, reducing total kilometres travelled, which results in less wear and tear on vehicles and savings in maintenance and fuel costs.
• Your organics and recycling or garbage will be collected on the same day (see your zone’s collection schedule), but they may be collected at different times.

All garbage should be placed on the curb no later than 7:00 am on collection days. Residents are reminded not to put garbage on the curb before 4:00 am on collection day during Bear Smart Season (between April 1 and November 30). Failure to do so can result in a $100.00 fine (as outlined in Solid Waste, Recyclables and Organics Bylaw No. 40-67). 

The garbage carts should be placed on the curbside with the wheels against the gutter, the curb, or at the edge of the roadway by 7:00 a.m. on collection day. During Bear Smart season (April 1 - November 30), carts should not be placed at curb any earlier than 4:00 am.

Be Bear Smart

Most residents choose to store their carts in a convenient location such as their carport, garage, or at the side of their house. The footprint (dimensions at the base of the cart) is not appreciably larger than an average-sized garbage container.

Under Solid Waste, Recyclables and Organics Bylaw No. 40-67:

• Residents must ensure that solid waste carts are stored securely and made inaccessible to wildlife.
• Between April 1 and November 30, carts must not be placed at the curb earlier than 4:00 am on collection day (carts must be removed from the curb no later than 7:00 pm year-round).
• No property owner or occupier shall accumulate, store, or collect any wildlife attractants unless stored in an enclosed structure or securely fastened bear-resistant cart.

Be Bear Smart

Demolition, Land Clearing, and Construction Waste (DLC Waste) consists of largely inert solid waste, resulting from construction, remodelling, and demolition projects. Examples of specific materials include, but are not limited to, wood, concrete, scrap metal, asphalt shingles, gypsum, tile, or porcelain fixtures.

Search the Waste Wise Kamloops app to find out how to properly dispose of your DLC waste.

The higher fees provide an incentive to reduce and recycle, while saving landfill space. Diverting material from the landfill saves space for material that truly belongs there and allows us to keep landfills open for as long as possible. It moves the cost of solid waste disposal away from the taxpayer and onto users.

DLC waste is not generated by everyone, so the cost of this service should be subsidized by the users and not taxpayers. The fee structure is aligned with surrounding Regional Districts and municipalities.

Separating and sorting all divertable or recyclable DLC material will result in lower disposal fees, and for most loads, result in significant savings.

The City of Kamloops and its landfill contractors follow specific safety protocols for managing known asbestos-containing materials at our landfill sites. Asbestos waste is a hazardous material and must never be included in your household garbage.

The City, in partnership with the TNRD, has implemented new disposal procedures to help protect workers, residents, and the environment. Learn more here. 

Recycle BC is a not-for-profit organization responsible for residential packaging and paper product recycling throughout BC, through curbside, multi-family and/or depot services. Recycle BC ensures that residential packaging and paper products are sorted and responsibly managed and recycled. 
The City of Kamloops is a contractor of Recycle BC and as such we must ensure that the recycling collected by the City meets Recycle BC standards. 

The City must educate residents on the types of materials that are accepted in recycling carts and bins, and implement measures to reduce recycling contamination (the amount of unaccepted materials collected through the program).  

Learn more about Recycle BC. 
 

These items all require special handling as they can break and/or become embedded or tangled with other materials when mixed in with other items. This “contaminates” the recycling load and results in a decreased amount of materials able to be recycled. 

Flexible plastics (chip bags, bread bags and other plastic overwrap) mix with other recyclables during collection and are difficult to separate, and plastic bags collected with other materials also get caught up in processing equipment. Both of these issues lead to less flexible plastics and other materials being recycled. When plastic bags and overwrap are returned to one of the designated depots, staff can ensure material is empty, clean and dry and only the correct types of soft plastic are included.

Glass can easily break during the collection and recycling processes, posing a safety hazard to workers; broken glass is also more difficult to sort from other recyclables, leading to an overall decrease in the amount of glass and other curbside recycling materials ultimately being recycled. 

Glass (bottles and jars only), foam packaging, and flexible plastics can be taken to one of three designated depots for recycling.

•    Columbia Bottle Depot (formerly General Grant’s Sahali) - 963 Camosun Crescent

•    Lorne Street Bottle Depot - 270 Halston Avenue

•    London Drugs (450 Lansdowne Street) accepts flexible plastics and foam packaging ONLY

Recycling Depots

The Columbia Bottle Depot (formerly General Grant’s Sahali, at 963 Camosun Crescent) and the Lorne Street Bottle Depot (270 Halston Avenue) accept the following items that are not accepted in curbside recycling: foam containers and packaging (i.e. cups, meat trays, egg cartons, foam cushion packaging from appliances), glass, and flexible plastics (i.e. zipper-lock and stand-up pouches, crinkly wrappers like chip bags and granola bar wrappers, plastic food netting, and bubble wrap). 

These items are not accepted in curbside recycling because they require special handling (i.e. they may stick to, or break and become embedded in, other materials in the cart). 

These depots also collect many other items covered under various Extended Producer Responsibility programs, such as beverage containers, electronics, and paint. Excess curbside recyclables such as cardboard, plastic and metal containers, and paper packaging are also accepted (sorted into the appropriate bins at each depot). 

Visit the web pages for the Columbia Bottle Depot and the Lorne Street Bottle Depot to learn what items each location accepts. You can also use the Waste Wizard in the Waste Wise Kamloops app to look up how to properly dispose of hundreds of items.

The City collects recycling under the provincial Recycle BC program. Recycling contamination occurs when material that is not accepted for collection under Recycle BC guidelines ends up curbside and multi-family collection program. 

Contaminants include glass bottles and jars, flexible plastics, Styrofoam, food waste, textiles, books, bagged or nested material, electronic waste, scrap metal, and hazardous materials (e.g. batteries, paint). High contamination rates can result in a financial penalty to the City. Please do your part to keep contaminants out of the recycling cart.  

Use the Waste Wizard in the Waste Wise app to look up where hundreds of items go and whether they belong in the recycling, organics, or garbage cart, or if they are accepted at a specified drop-off depot. 
 

Although they are made of paper, hard cover and soft cover books are not accepted by Recycle BC. This is because these types of books are durable goods—not product packaging or residential paper. In addition, hard and soft book covers and spines often contain glue, which is a contaminant in the recycling stream. Certain books like comic books, magazines, and phone books are accepted in the recycling cart. Find book recycling details at Kamloops.ca/BookRecycling. 

City trucks deliver the materials to a local sorting facility. Material is sorted and baled into commodities like metals, plastics, cartons, cardboard, and mixed paper, which is sold to end markets. Many of these markets are right here in BC—98% of plastics are recycled at a facility in the Lower Mainland. The sorting and sale is managed by Recycle BC. Over 90% of material collected is recycled. Visit RecycleBC.ca to learn more.

Drop off your house household hazardous waste year-round for safe disposal at North-Wood Environmental Services facility at 480 Okanagan Way in the Mt. Paul Industrial Park. 

Common household hazardous items include paints, batteries, gas/oil mixtures, cleaning products, propane tanks/canisters, fertilizers, hot tub/pool chemicals and more. 

Never dispose of household hazardous waste in your solid waste carts. The risk of fire or explosion is especially high for collection vehicles, landfills, and recycling facilities because they contain significant amounts of paper and other flammable materials. The combination of easily flammable material, the type of machinery used, air, and large amounts of material in piles where sparks can smolder undetected for lengthy periods of time makes the presence of hazardous material especially dangerous.

Visit Kamloops.ca/HHW for more information.
 

In December 2020, Council authorized staff to move ahead with developing a residential organic waste collection program. This included a period of public consultation in 2020 and a year-long pilot program from fall 2021 to fall 2022 before implementing community-wide collection in 2023. 

The implementation of curbside organics collection is driven by climate action and waste reduction goals. The Community Climate Action Plan (Big Move 5) includes goals to capture all kitchen and yard waste for beneficial end use and to keep methane-generating materials out of the landfill (methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is produced when organic material like food, yard, and paper waste break down in a landfill environment).

An organics program is estimated to reduce the community’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 9,500 tonnes per year—the equivalent to removing about 2,000 passenger vehicles from local roads for one year!

KAMPLAN, the City’s Official Community Plan, and the Thompson-Nicola Regional District’s Solid Waste Management Plan aim to reduce waste per capita to the landfill to 560 kg/person annually by 2023 and by 500 kg/person by 2028 (for reference, in 2022, the disposal rate for Kamloops was 690 kg/person annually). KAMPLAN also emphasizes the adoption of a zero-waste philosophy and leadership in recycling, composting, and waste management. 

Garbage audits from 2021 showed that up to 42% of residential garbage is organic material that can be composted. A curbside organics program will help residents reduce their household garbage waste and keep compostable (i.e. methane-generating) material out of the landfill, which in turn helps to reduce overall community greenhouse gas emissions.

Transport of the organic material from the City’s transfer station is managed by Arrow. Material is hauled to one of three sites: the Ingerbelle Composting Facility in Princeton, BC (Arrow Environmental); the Halton Composting Facility in Cache Creek, BC (Emterra Environmental); and the Stswékstem Engineered Waste Management Facility in Kamloops (Tk’emlúps/Grasslands Organics). 
 

Despite the transportation emissions when the material is transferred to Princeton or Cache Creek, there is still a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of keeping the organic material out of the landfill where it would be buried (not composted) and ultimately generate methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The organics program will cost residents receiving curbside residential solid waste collection one dollar per month ($12 per year), billed quarterly on their utility bills (the first utility charge will not appear until the first quarter of 2024). The initial capital start-up costs will be covered by current reserves and grant funding. 

The City was awarded three grants valued at over $2 million to support the organic waste program—two Green Municipal Fund grants for a feasibility study (public consultation phase) and a pilot program, as well as a $1.78 million grant from the Province’s Clean BC Organic Infrastructure and Collection Program to support the community rollout.

Yes, windblown or culled fruit from trees such as apple, peach, apricot, pear, cherry, and plum is considered acceptable leaf and yard waste. Halloween pumpkins can also be taken to the yard waste sites.

No. Noxious weeds should be bagged and placed in your garbage container or taken to the landfill for proper disposal.

This is due to the possible spread of weed seeds that may occur during transport and handling, which may contaminate our yard waste sites.

No, compost is a soil additive. Too much compost could be detrimental and may kill the plants.

Our Parks Department recommends compost to be mixed at a ratio of 3 kg of compost to 7 kg of soil. 

For top dressing of lawns, add 3 kg of compost per 1m2 of lawn or add 1/2 cm of compost to your lawn in the spring or fall, trying to spread the compost evenly. Don't smother the grass blades.

Received yard waste is fed into a large grinder which chips the material into finer and smaller pieces.

The ground-up yard waste is then placed into large rows where natural bacteria start the breakdown process. Rows are turned by a mechanical turner (like a massive rototiller) about once a week to ensure uniform breakdown of materials and to provide oxygen to the bacteria in the windrow.

During turning, treated wastewater effluent may be added to the compost rows if they seem too dry. This process continues for 3 to 12 months (depending on row composition and time of year) while the yard waste breaks down. Once the yard waste is deemed to have broken down enough, the material is placed through a large screener which removes larger debris and any plastics that may have been missed at the yard waste receiving end. Screened material is then ready for sale to the general public.

On average it takes about 8 months for yard waste to become compost.

In 2023, 15,051 tonnes of yard and wood waste was diverted from the landfill and used in compost production.

No, this is not true. Heat created by microorganisms during composting kills weed seeds and disease-causing organisms.

Temperatures of compost piles routinely reach 65°C (149°F) for consecutive days; high enough to kill weed seeds. To test this, a study was done in which cookie sheets filled with compost were placed in an office window and watered to see if anything would germinate. Nothing ever did. 

Compost is a great growing medium. If any weed seeds are blown onto your garden after you have added the compost, weeds are certainly bound to germinate. By their design, weed seeds flourish in disturbed soil, especially ones with nutrient rich compost added to it.

You can bring smaller containers (garbage cans or Rubbermaid bins) and fill them yourselves with compost. Each container filled with compost costs $5.00.

A loaded tractor bucket (approximately 500 kg) is $25.00. 

No, pet waste or farm manure is not allowed to be dropped off at yard waste sites or added to our compost.

Although we can't guarantee that no animal manure makes it into the yard waste people bring in, the City randomly tests a few compost piles a year to ensure that Fecal Coliform and Ecoli counts are well below accepted levels.

Compost made from yard waste will contain some pesticide residues but very likely at untraceable levels.

In general, the commercial composting process is quite good at breaking down the modern pesticides that are used on landscapes today. When Cinnamon Ridge first opened up, the City tested compost for pesticides and herbicides for three consecutive years and no pesticides or herbicides were ever found.

Since then, the Pesticide Use Control Bylaw No. 26-4 was introduced, further reducing the amount of pesticides used in the city.

The City routinely takes random compost samples for analysis each year to ensure acceptable levels of heavy metals. This process is dictated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (responsible for compost-producing facilities under the Fertilizers Act). 

Yes, wastewater effluent is used in the making of compost.

Wastewater effluent is pumped under the Thompson River to Cinnamon Ridge to be used for irrigation on farms in the area and to provide moisture for our compost. Water not pumped under the river for reuse is released directly into the river. Wastewater effluent is treated to the same level as its release point. So in this case, the wastewater is treated to the same water quality level as the Thompson River.

No, compost is made from 100% yard waste.

Up until 2011, the City used to mix biosolids (wastewater sludge) with yard waste on half of the Cinnamon Ridge site. The biosolids compost met all strict health guidelines mandated by the Organic Matter Recycling Regulation and was certified as Class A Compost (compost that can be sold to the general public). 

Even with meeting the highest standards, the City chose not to make the biosolids compost available to the general public and was used internally by various City departments.

The City no longer uses biosolids at Cinnamon Ridge.

Cinnamon Ridge compost is made from 100% yard waste dropped off by residents at one of our three yard waste sites.

The Guaranteed Analysis is: 
Minimum Organic Matter (OM) = 35% 
Maximum Moisture Content = 35%

You can drop off your Christmas tree at any one of our designated locations between December 27 and January 15.

Christmas Tree Recycling