Big Belly: a refuse revolution

By Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week Published: August 19

A new trash compactor for downtown has worked so well that the city’s public works department plans to order three more for other locations in Kamloops. The Big Belly Cordless Compaction System has only been in place at the Lansdowne Street transit exchange for a month as a pilot project and already it is proving efficient. David Duckworth, the city’s director of public works and utilities, said crews have only needed to empty the machine once every two weeks, which is less often than first thought. “One of the positive things is instead of emptying one of the receptacles every day, you can empty them less frequently,” Duckworth said. “And it costs less staff time to do that.” The Big Belly, which looks like an oversized post office box, automatically compacts trash using solar power, cutting down on the number of times it needs to be emptied. Any type of trash that would go to the landfill can be tossed into the compactor. Duckworth said the city will probably lease two more Big Belly machines on a monthly basis, with the intention of purchasing them at a later date. While the city is still considering where the other compactors will go, Duckworth noted one will likely be on the North Shore near the yet-to-be-constructed transit exchange, and one more downtown in a high-traffic area. The machines have also withstood the wear and tear of the public and haven’t been vandalized. The city was inspired to trash-test the Big Belly after staff came across them in Banff on the way back from a Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention last year in Calgary.