Photo: City of Penticton

The City of Penticton hopes new signage will help reduce contamination of recyclable items in the bins of multifamily buildings. 

The educational signs feature images of common materials acceptable for residential recycling, as well as tips on preparing the material so it is able to be recycled. 

Images of common prohibited materials, like furniture, electronics, black garbage bags and clothing are also shown. 

"Partnerships between the city and multi-family buildings are effective in lowering the contamination rate of recyclable materials,” said community sustainability coordinator David Kassian. “Working together to develop educational signage and tools will help residents to better understand what is, and what is not, recyclable from their home.”

Athens Creek Towers in Penticton has embraced the signage project. 

"In 2018, the City of Penticton helped us extensively with our recycling program by providing educational material which we distributed to each suite, conducting audits of the contents of our bin by students during the summer, the results of which we shared with our residents to highlight the problems we were having, and provided the design for the recycling bin sign we had made locally for a very reasonable price,” said vice president of Athens Creek Towers Lawrence Godby. 

“Together, all of these efforts have substantially reduced the amount of inappropriate materials being deposited in our recycling bin.”

Signage and educational materials are available to other multifamily dwellings as well. For more information, email [email protected].