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Group picks up recycling option

A door-to-door, co-mingled recycling service is coming to downtown Salmon Arm Feb. 1.

A door-to-door, co-mingled recycling service is coming to downtown Salmon Arm Feb. 1.

Downtown Salmon Arm manager Joanne Mason says the association has long recognized the need for a door-to-door commercial service and the timing proved right when Shuswap Association For Community Living (SACL) announced they would be closing their Environmental Solutions program.

She says Downtown Salmon Arm is helping to facilitate the new and much larger program that grew out of conversations with the Columbia Shuswap Regional District and others.

Mason adds that a recent CSRD survey revealed that a lot of businesses are wasting time going to recycling stations.

“We’re a little behind in that Penticton, Kamloops and Kelowna have been doing this and Kamloops is rolling out a new program that gets rid of dumpsters in the downtown area,” says Mason. “It will have to be a tightly run ship downtown because it is a curbside program.”

The association was going to roll the program out earlier but decided to wait until SACL closes down their service at the end of January.

“We know there’s an emotional connection to SACL clients; we’ve gotten to know them,” said Mason. “There was never any intention to step into their territory – we’re a huge supporter of SACL.”

The new door-to-door service for downtown business owners will be rolled out by Progressive Waste Solutions, the company that has the residential garbage pick-up and recycling contracts in Salmon Arm,

John Snelling, Interior BC sales manager, says he also approached SACL to see if there was some way they could work together.

Part of a cross-Canada company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Snelling says, Progressive Waste Solutions has an office in Salmon Arm and hires local employees.

Snelling and several other Progressive Waste Solutions employees and reps from Spa Hills Farm will attend a Jan. 15 meeting at 5 p.m. at the Shuswap Pie Company to explain the program to downtown business owners.

In the downtown core, the door-to-door service will accept the same items that are included in the residential service.

Clear bags to be used in the pay-for-service program have the items that can be included inscribed right on the bag.

“The need is there and we’re starting out in the downtown core, and as well, we’ll go to commercial industrial and commercial businesses outside the downtown core that have enough material,” Snelling says. “We’re excited, we’re looking forward to it.”