When it comes to putting recyclables into the bin, Peachland is part of a regional district that’s good but not great.
That’s according to Recycle BC, which is responsible for curbside collection in the Regional District of Central Okanagan (RDCO) and therefore Peachland. Recycle BC statistics show that the Regional District of Central Okanagan recycled 43.1 kilograms per resident in 2025, a figure which includes curbside collections, depots and pop-ups. That’s better than the Regional District of North Okanagan at 40.2 kilos, but behind the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen at 49.1 kilos.
“Per resident or per capita, I would say it”s kind of in the middle,” said Recycle BC’s manager of stakeholder relations Ann Goulding. “You”re doing alright, but of course there’s always room for improvement.”
The RDCO turned over responsibility for curbside collection and management to Recycle BC on May 1 of this year. The not-for-profit organization provides residential recycling services to BC, ensuring household materials are collected from households and recycling depots, sorted and responsibly recycled.
Goulding says contrary to what many people think, Peachland taxpayers aren’t on the hook for the cost of the program and haven’t been since 2014, when the responsibility for recycling shifted upstream to producers. “That’s a common misconception. There’s actually no cost to taxpayers for residential packaging and paper recycling,” said Goulding. “Under BC’s Extended Producer Responsibility framework, or EPR, businesses such as retailers, manufacturers, and restaurants that supply the packaging and paper into the marketplace, they’re responsible for funding and managing the recycling system.”
The EPR requires businesses to reduce the environmental impact of their products and packaging spanning the entire product management lifecycle for material that enters the residential marketplace. It’s the first program of its kind in North America, where producers are responsible for both the financing and the operation of the province-wide recycling system, she said.
Peachlanders will have noticed the new grey and pink boxes that were added to the system when Recycle BC took over the program on May 1. The grey boxes are for non-deposit glass bottles and jars, and the pink boxes for flexible plastics. Goulding said flexible plastics are difficult to process and it took a lot of researchand development before making collection of them part of the curbside service. Expanding what residents can recycle to include flexible plastics is one of Recycling BC’s successes. “Pink is for flexible plastics, so anything that kind of like crinkles or, you know, those chip bags, avocado netting, bubble mailers. You’ll be surprised how much flexible plastics you go through in a day,” she said.
And if you’re wondering whether putting a wine bottle into the gray bin is within the rules, Goulding confirms that it is – but you’re forfeiting the refund you would get if you took it to a bottle depot. “One question we always get from folks is, what about our wine bottles? You can put them in there. They will be responsibly managed and recycled, but you will not get your deposit back, so that is the only difference,” she said.
So what actually happens from start to finish in the recycling process? Goulding described the process as follows. Once collected from the curbside or recycling depot or from an apartment or condo, materials enter Recycling BC’s province- wide post-collection network. First they go to one of just over 40 receiving facilities around the province for consolidation, then to one of three material recovery facilities where it’s sorted further, cleaned and prepared for shipping to what Goulding called “end-markets”. These are approved companies or manufacturers that buys the materials and turns them into something new and usable. (One such end-market is a company in Kelowna that buys recycled metals and turns them into new products.)
An example is those flexible plastics that you can now put into the pink bin. Almost all of them end up at a facility in Metro Vancouver that receives sorted containers and flexible plastics and converts them into raw materials. The raw materials are small plastic pellets that look, said Goulding, a lot like lentils. “Then they’re sold to customers who then use them to manufacture things like new packaging, nursery plant pots, pails, garbage cans, lids,” she said.
And the glass that you can put into the gray bin? It goes to a facility in Abbotsford, where it’s made into new bottles, or to a facility in Quesnel, where it’s converted into an aggregate used in place of crushed rock on building sites. Goulding said metal containers are sold to companies that turn it into new packaging like aluminum cans or sheet metal for automotive manufacturing. Paper is turned into things like egg carton and other paper products at facilities in North America and Asia, she said.
So while Peachlanders are doing their share of recycling, could they get their numbers higher and perhaps even help the RDCO becoming the top recycling regional district in the province? Goulding said people educating themselves on the full picture of what’s recyclable on recyclebc.ca would help people get more stuff into the recycling bags and bins. If it’s packaging, it’s almost certainly recyclable, she said.
“What we want is residents to put more of the accepted materials into their bins or take it to the depot or in the case of certain materials like flexible plastics if they don’t have a pink bin they could also take it to London Drugs,” she said. “Even with metals like aluminum pie plates, a lot of people don’t know that those can go into their mixed container bins. If you’re not sure if something is recyclable or not, maybe going on the website and checking, so taking that extra step. Making sure it’s clean, give it a quick rinse, and then put it in in the appropriate bin or take it to the depot.”
By Jeff McDonald, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Aug 13, 2026 at 17:22
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