FAQs

The province requires that each Regional District create a Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) to guide recycling and waste management in the region for the next 20-30 years. The CVRD’s most recent SWMP was approved in 2020, with 13 Zero Waste strategies to reduce landfill disposal between now and 2030.

Zero Waste means moving toward a circular economy, where reusable material is recovered or repurposed. A three-stream curbside collection service is one important step towards recovering reusable materials as it will remove organic material from the garbage stream.

Three-stream curbside collection service includes the collection of organics (e.g., food and/or yard waste), recycling and garbage. Three-stream curbside collection is already provided in all four of the CVRD’s member municipalities (collection is provided by those municipalities) and one of the First Nations’ communities (collection is provided by the Nation). Meanwhile, curbside collection services offered to residents living in CVRD Electoral Areas vary widely – everyone has access to curbside recycling but only some have access to curbside garbage and organics collection. 

In 2018 during the engagement process to update the Solid Waste Management Plan, residents indicated that equitable access to three-stream curbside collection was a priority. 

The service will be mandatory for all single-family Electoral Area homes under the CVRD’s curbside collection bylaw. Requiring that all eligible homes receive the same service ensures that costs for the service are evenly distributed throughout the district.  

The service will be implemented in June with the new curbside utility in effect as of January 2025.

 

• Weekly food and yard waste (combined) in 132L rolling tote
• Alternating bi-weekly recycling (240L rolling tote) and garbage collection (132L rolling tote)
• Monthly glass collection (27L bin)

Potentially. We will be altering the existing routes to maximize efficiency. Any changes to your collection day will be communicated via mail well before the service commences in the spring/summer of 2025. 

To get route updates sent directly to your phone or email, subscribe to the Cowichan Recycles app!

- Every week: organics (food and yard waste)

- Every two weeks: regular recycling

- Every two weeks: garbage

- Every month: glass bottles/jars

Not at this time- it takes time to know what works best for your home.

The CVRD will be delivering the standard sets to all eligible homes and will offer an upgrade window after residents have had some time to settle into the service.

New totes will be delivered to eligible homes.

Garbage and organics bins used by independent waste collectors are not compatible with the three-stream program. The CVRD uses automated curbside collection trucks, which require specific totes to fit their mechanical arms. These new organics and/or garbage totes will be delivered in the spring of 2025.

Old waste collection bins can serve many purposes such as:

- Empty refundable beverage container storage

- Flexible plastics and other recycling depot materials storage

- Rainwater collection

- Animal food storage

- Equipment storage

The CVRD is looking into a collection and redistribution program for incompatible totes. Stay tuned!

Per the direction of the CVRD Board of Directors, the service will be fully provided by CVRD staff. 

Independent waste collectors will no longer provide garbage or organics collection to eligible residences once the three-stream program is implemented. 

Please reach out to your independent waste collector for any billing or service transition updates.

The three-stream program is focused on Electoral Area residences that already receive curbside collection. However, Strategy 2 of the Solid Waste Management Plan identifies that reducing disposal rates from multi-family residential homes by requiring separation of garbage, recycling, and organics is a high priority. The CVRD will work with other jurisdictions in the future to make sure that all multi-family residents have access to a service like the three-stream collection program.

The CVRD’s current curbside collection program varies across its nine Electoral Areas as all eligible households are provided with recycling collection, and only households in Areas D, E, F, G and I receive CVRD garbage collection services. During the public engagement for the region’s Solid Waste Management Plan, residents expressed that the CVRD should expand its curbside collection program and align it across all Electoral Areas. As a result, the three-stream service will provide organics, recycling, garbage, and glass collection for all 14,200 eligible Electoral Area households. Each household will receive a bear-resistant organics tote, a glass collection bin, and a kitchen food scrap bin in April-May 2025. The 8,420 households from Electoral Areas A, B, C and H will also receive a bear-resistant garbage tote.

From January through May of 2025, households will continue to receive their current level of service. While there is a cost to providing garbage service to Areas D, E, F, G and I, there are additional costs for rolling out the garbage service to new garbage customers in Areas A, B, C and H that will be shared with current garbage customers. These costs are illustrated in the following comparison.

Cost of collecting garbage in areas D, E, F, G and I from January – May 2025

 In 2025, the average garbage “lift” cost (the combined cost of collecting and disposing of one garbage tote) is estimated to be $3.44. Over the first 22 weeks of 2025, garbage will be collected 11 times from each household in Areas D, E, F, G and I, resulting in a per-household cost of $37.84. The total cost of collecting garbage from all 5,780 households in these Electoral Areas is approximately $218,715.

The cost of providing bear-resistant garbage totes to new garbage customers in Electoral Areas A, B, C and H

It is important to note that, in addition to providing new garbage totes to the 8,420 households in Areas A, B, C and H, the CVRD will replace the aging garbage totes in Areas D, E, F, G and I with bear-resistant totes over the next number of years, prioritizing areas with the highest rates of human-bear conflicts.

However, there are extra costs for providing new garbage totes for the rollout of the three-stream program that will not be present when the CVRD provides replacement totes to Areas D, E, F, G, and I. Because of:

• The household distribution costs of using a contractor to deliver new garbage totes to each eligible household in Areas A, B, C and H, and
• The interest cost of borrowing the money to purchase the new garbage totes.

Replacement totes for existing garbage customers will not incur distribution costs as the CVRD will not be using a contractor to distribute them but rather will facilitate replacements gradually using existing staff. Secondly, replacement totes will be purchased with utility fee revenue, rather than borrowed funds, which will not incur interest charges.

The distribution cost for each garbage tote is $8, while the estimated interest expense per tote is around $20, based on current interest rates as of December 2024. Considering that 8,420 garbage totes will be purchased and distributed, the cumulative costs for household distribution and loan interest are $37,360 and $168,400, totalling $235,760 as shown in the graphic below.

Dividing the total cost of $235,760 among all 14,200 households in the Electoral Area results in a charge of $16.60 per household. Residents in Areas D, E, F, G and I, will not incur this cost when their totes are replaced.

Balancing the cost between existing garbage and new garbage customers

To balance out this additional cost, the 2025 utility fee similarly shares the total cost of collecting and disposing of garbage from Areas D, E, F, G and I from January through May. When this cost of $218,715 is shared across all CVRD households, each will pay about $15.40. The graphic below compares the differences in costs and shows how much each household will pay once these costs are shared.

As an overview, costs covered by the 2025 curbside utility fee include:

• One-time rollout costs - These include the many costs, small and large to help launch the service such as equipment rentals, printed educational materials, and fees associated with distributing totes and bins to each household.
• Loan repayments - To keep utility fees as low as possible at the time, capital funds for purchasing assets for the new service (such as trucks, totes, and bins) were not prioritized in previous years, necessitating the use of Board-approved loans to finance their purchase. These loans must be repaid over five years and repayments trigger upon delivery of assets. The CVRD will receive its assets in early 2025, resulting in loan payments that start well in advance of the start of the service in June.
• Waste processing and disposal costs – Fees associated with sending our garbage to the landfill in Washington State and processing organics into compost on the island.
• Regular operating costs - These include everything from truck operation and maintenance, to waste collection staff and education related to the collection service.
• Contribution to reserve - To help fund capital projects without relying heavily on loans, a portion of utility fees should be put into capital reserves every year. While it is too late to avoid the cost of borrowing for three-stream service assets, setting aside a responsible sum of money annually will reduce or avoid the cost of borrowing money when our curbside trucks are replaced at the end of their service lives.

2024 cost comparisons

In 2024, operational costs were limited to the following:

• Loan repayments (small),
• Waste processing and disposal costs, and
• Regular operating costs.

In 2025, before waste collection and disposal costs are even factored into the utility fee, expenditures beyond those of 2024 already include:

• One-time rollout costs,
• Loan repayments (larger), and
• A contribution to reserve.

These costs constitute over 35% of the total operating expenditures for 2025, or $120 of the $345 utility fee. The remaining $225 comes from the costs of collecting, processing and disposing of curbside wastes.

Three-stream curbside collection will mean that all residents in single-family dwellings across the CVRD will have the same access to curbside recycling, garbage, and organics collection services. With this service, CVRD Electoral Area residents will, at a minimum, have access to organics, recycling and garbage collection at the curb. Having access to convenient collection is helpful for residents when trying to reduce waste disposal and is especially important for residents with limited access to garbage and organics drop-off facilities.

It is important that everyone has equitable access to three-stream curbside collection.  Providing garbage pickup to all eligible Electoral Area residents will help keep the organics and recycling collection totes free from incompatible materials (e.g., contamination). Reducing contamination decreases waste and helps the CVRD meet contract agreements with organics and recycling processors.

We understand that our community has diverse waste management needs and that some residents compost at home. However, certain organic items (such as meat, fish, poultry, bones and dairy) are unsuitable for backyard composting and must, unfortunately, be disposed of in the garbage. Introducing a curbside organic collection service is an important measure of reducing landfill waste, as 33% of our region's waste contains organic material.

The three-stream curbside service will be implemented based on best practices for wildlife-safe waste management as set out by WildSafeBC. The CVRD has been working closely with WildSafeBC and Provincial Conservation Officers over the past five years to ensure that curbside recycling and garbage, as well as other attractants such as fruit trees, backyard composters, and backyard chickens, are managed in a wild-safe manner. To reduce wildlife conflicts, the CVRD will be collecting curbside organics weekly, and totes will be equipped with mechanics to try to keep wildlife safe. 

It is important to note that there is no such thing as a “bear-proof” tote. A hungry bear will do whatever it takes to reach a desirable meal and no tote has been found to prevent determined wildlife from breaking into it. We have also seen that curbside recyclables can attract wildlife as well, so it is still important that all residents secure attractants to prevent human-wildlife conflicts. 

For more information and tips on wild-safe waste management visit the CVRD's Bear Aware webpage. For even more tips on how to manage attractants visit WildSafeBC's tips for a Wild Safe Yard webpage.