Judging by the long lineup of cars long before the gates even opened on Earth Day 2018, water conservation is an important environmental issue for many Kelowna residents.
In just under 90 minutes Sunday morning in Kelowna, at the Regional District of Central Okanagan’s annual composter and rain barrel sale, all 125 available rain barrels—priced at $80 each–had sold out.
By noon, most of the 350 compost bins for $35 each had also been purchased by the public at the KLO Campus of Okanagan College.
Organizers were again encouraged by the response from people in the Central Okanagan.
“(People in Kelowna) are environmentally conscious, they’re water-conservation conscious…we had people lined up at 7 o’clock this morning, two hours before it was open, so that tells you a lot,” said Rae Stewart, waste reduction facilitator with RDCO. “The deal is definitely part of it, but I think it’s more the case of people wanting to do the right thing.”
Stewart says because compost units have been selling in big numbers for several years, organizers keep expecting demand to fall off significantly, but it continues to remain strong.
“Every year, we think we’ve hit the saturation level with the composters and we wonder how many more can we sell,” she said, “but every year we manage to sell hundreds.”
The KSS Owls football team was on site Sunday at OC, assisting with the moving and loading of the composters and barrels.
Owls head coach Chris Cartwright said it’s important for his program to support worthy causes in Kelowna, such as RDCO’s Earth Day initiative.
“Any chance we can give our kids to give back to the community, is number one,” said Cartwright. “When I asked the boys, is this something you want to do to give back, we got bunch of volunteers from the team and they keep coming throughout the day, so that’s great to see.”
For more on water conservation, see the Okanagan Basin Water Board’s public outreach and education website at okwaterwise.ca.
For composting tips, see RDCO’s website www.regionaldistrict.com.
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