Reduce, reuse and recycle.
The first order of business for a municipality is to reduce waste.
On the list of what can be done, the banning of single use plastic bags is huge.
Victoria has already done it. Salmon Arm is next
West Kelowna councillor Stephen Johnston says "I read an article where they said the Canadian index for plastic bags per capita is 200 bags per person annually - and so in Salmon Arm, they estimated that if the index was 100 bags per person, Salmon Arm would save 1.7-million plastic bags from circulating into landfills next year," he says.
Johnston says do the math: 200 bags per person times the population of the Central Okanagan means millions and millions of bags are no longer in the garbage.
The Regional District of Central Okanagan is formulating a strategy to be rolled out for consideration of the area councils sometime this year.