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RDCK to restrict non-residential organic waste from landfills
Published 11:00 am Monday, February 2, 2026
By Bill Metcalfe
Composting windrows at RDCK’s compost facility near Salmo. (Regional District of Central Kootenay)
The Regional District of Central Kootenay is offering incentives to businesses to separate their food waste for pick-up and composting.
But after a nine-month grace period, they could face fines for not doing so.
This is further step toward keeping organic materials out of landfills, according to Alayne Hamilton, environmental projects lead at the RDCK.
“There are 3,900 tonnes of potential organic waste that we could be keeping out of the landfill every year in the industrial, commercial, institutional (ICI) sector, and that is really significant,” she said.
Just under 70 per cent of B.C.’s population already lives in a jurisdiction with an organics disposal ban at landfills, she said.
“So this is really just aligning us with what’s already happening across the country.”
The City of Nelson does not pick up waste from the ICI sector as it does from residences. Each business hires a private sector hauler, such as Waste Management or GFL, to pick up garbage and recycling and take it to the landfill or recycling depot. ICI sector entities pay the hauler based on the weight of their waste, which is known as the tipping fee.
Early in 2025, GFL intitiated a pilot project in Nelson, supported by the RDCK and the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce, in which a number of restaurants sorted organic waste and GFL delivered it to the composting site in Salmo for a tipping fee of $55 per tonne. The tipping fee for regular garbage is $177.25 per tonne.
In addition to a reduced tipping fee for organics, the RDCK is now offering an additional incentive: a $400 one-time payment to help businesses set themselves up for organics separation and collection.
“This is to help with startup costs like bins, carts or other supplies like signage and compostable plastic bin liners and wildlife modifications to carts,” said Hamilton.
The RDCK has also announced a nine-month grace period after which an enforcement period will start. If garbage loads from the ICI sector contain more than 10 per cent organic waste, there will first be education and warnings, then enforcement, Hamilton said, which will involve increasing tipping fees up to $350 per tonne.
“I think with a lot of education and communication and collaboration, we can get there and hopefully commercial organics like diversion will just become the norm.”
These incentives and regulations will initially target larger food operations such as grocery stores, busy restaurants and commercial food manufacturers in Creston, Castlegar, Salmo and Nelson.
The ICI sector is responsible for about 45 per cent of the waste in the RDCK. Of that material, about 35 per cent is compostable organics.
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