By Sebastian Kanally, Times Chronicle

A new fully automated waste collection system is a little over a month away from kicking off and around 30,000 new carts will be rolling onto properties over the next month.

The new fully automated garbage, recycling, and yard waste program for the Regional District of the Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS will roll out on July 1, 2025.

The RDOS has been making preparations for the roll out and now over the next month (from June 2) three carts will be delivered to almost 10,000 properties receiving curbside service throughout the region.

The standard package that will be delivered to properties is a 120 Litre bin for garbage, a 240L bin for recycling and a 240L bin for yard waste.

All bins will have a black body and different coloured lids for their intended purpose: a black lid for garbage, blue lid for recycling, green lid for yard waste.

The final delivery list has been provided to the contractor rolling out the carts over the next month.

Community members can continue to change the size of the new carts they require, but the deadline has passed to receive them in the initial delivery. Any requests for different size carts will be changed out after July 1, 2025 and a $45 change-out fee will be charged.

The new bins will arrive after the RDOS already conducted an evaluation process of some community members’ existing carts, to see if they could be approved and added into the system.

The evaluation process began on March 19, 2025 and took two staff members 27 consecutive working days, where they evaluated 1159 carts. Of those evaluated, 983 carts were approved.

Approved carts are identified by RDOS logo stickers applied on both sides and a serial number sticker. The approved carts were also tagged with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to identify the cart as belonging to the specific property.

The 983 approved carts will reduce the total number of carts that need to be purchased for the new and improved collection service. Anyone with an approved cart will receive a $35 rebate per cart and will be included on the 2026 first quarter invoice for the collection service.

For more information on the new program coming in July 2025 visit the RDOS’ curbside collection pages.