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In November 2000 the RDKB adopted a goal of ZERO Waste. This lofty goal represented a major shift in focus for solid waste management throughout our District.
From merely managing our landfills as the repository of post-consumer waste, the Resource Recovery Department now has as its priority the mandate to look for value in the resources we formerly regarded as garbage.
In 2002 the RDKB commissioned students from Selkirk College to carry out a waste stream composition analysis. We discovered that 42% of our waste was material which could be composted. This material represents both a lost economic opportunity and a potential liability when buried in our landfills.
This problem is not unique to the RDKB. In 2004 the RDKB joined with the Regional District of Central Kootenay and Celgar Pulp in Castlegar to look at the most economic ways of diverting organic material from our landfills.
Western BioResources Consulting, in partnership with Footprint Environmental, was retained to evaluate the financial impacts of diverting this organic waste from our landfills. Funding for this study came from the RDKB, the RDCK, Celgar Pulp and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Enabling Fund.
The entire study is available for viewing and can be downloaded by clicking on the following links. Each section of the study is fairly lengthy, please use the Bookmarks on the left side of the Acrobat Viewer to navigate through the documents.
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