While the district of North Cowichan and the public continue to debate a shift in the tax rate from commercial to residential, there’s another shift happening that involves separating organic materials from regular garbage.

The ‘kitchen’ organics curbside pick-up starts May 1 and the director of engineering and operations, John MacKay, realizes it will require a change of habit for some people.

“It’ll take a little while to get used to it, so when you’re throwing something in your garbage you just need to think, ‘does this really need to go in the garbage? Can it go into the green bin’?”

A variety of materials can go in the green bin than even in your backyard composter, including paper products such as tissues and fast-food packaging, greasy pizza boxes, soiled and waxed cardboard and food scraps, including meat.

The catch is, while organics will now be picked up once a week, residents are permitted to put out only one bin of regular garbage once every two weeks.

MacKay pointed out that with organics pick-up programs, other jurisdictions, such as Ladysmith and Duncan, have reduced their regular garbage output by 40 per cent.

“They’re able to make it work with just the one garbage can every two weeks,” he said. “So it’s really just diverting from your garbage into your green bin.”

The district handed out some 9,000 green bins to homes around North Cowichan for the organics curbside pick-up, meant to reduce what goes into the landfill as well as save money, as tipping fees for organics are less than regular trash.

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