The Journey to Zero Waste

I must admit this is going to be our biggest challenge for meeting our goals of sustainable living here in our home.  All of the other goals (food, heating, electricity, transportation) are fairly easy to reach with a little work and wise investment.  Waste management is a different story as we need a lot of help from the government for this one.  We need help to force manufacturers to use less and more easily recyclable materials; to run the recycling programs and set up reuse centres.  That said, there are a lot of things we as consumers can do to improve the situation too.  Things like buying from the used market; buying only what you need (how much food goes in the compost everyday that we thought we would eat before it went bad); choosing products with less or no packaging (the bulk barn is pretty good for this) and leaving the packaging at the store or contacting the manufacturer directly to complain about their excessive packaging.

Some things we do are: no waste lunches going to school or work; glass refrigerator containers for left overs; buying mostly used items (antique furniture, clothes, etc.); making a lot of our own snacks and "fast food" and reusing items i.e. hand me downs.  I've noticed that most of our waste is generated around food packaging and consumer good packaging.  I'm sure there are still many things we can do to find better products that are not overly packaged.  We're shooting to be zero waste by the end of 2010 so I'm hoping the government will get this off the ground and make some needed changes to help us out. 

We're going to learn more about this topic at a meeting this week at:

Introducing Zero Waste — Information Night

Thursday, November 27th, 2008, 7pm
Faith United Church
1778 Nash Rd, Courtice (east of Courtice Road) [MAP]

http://www.zerowaste4zeroburning.ca 

 

We hope to see you there.  Until then, do what you can!

Comments

[Scot]

Duane... we fully understand the struggle with trash in terms of living more sustainably. I really appreciate your insights and all you are doing. I thought you would be interested in our website which exposes the connection between fast food packaging and the destruction of the forests of the southeast atlantic... nofreerefills.org

[Siobhan]

The problem is in the entire packaging world. About 3/4 of my families waste goes to the green and blue bin, but there is a significant amount going to a landfil. I do not believe that leaving the packaging (e.g a package of ready-made muffins) will help at all, unless -everyone- does that. Even the biodegradeable garbage bags are too expensive, and sometimes hard to find. When you have an extremely low monthly, and yearly income, you can only do so much.
What I would like to see is the packaging world completely overhauled by our government. No number 3, 6, and 7 plastics, and more 1, 2, 4, and 5. Even in my district the blue bin collectors will not take 4 and 5, even though those plastics can be recycled. Sometimes they won't even take number 1 and 2 if it is oddly shaped, like a strawberry container.
Ontario is suppose to be the leading province for energy, and we are all living on natural gas, throwing away number 1, 2, 4 and 5 plastics that can be recycled, and being charged for having more garbage. The government also expects low income families to tap into the Retro fit funds to fix their houses. Did they ever collect data that some people are not capable of saving money for food at the end of the month? Make a program for low income families and do not let them suffer from starvation because they demand them to retro fit their homes, which sometimes they are lucky to heat in the winter months.
I'm greatly disappointed, not only in my town but in my province.

[PMSPMS]

Hi D!

Good to see you're still working on all this!

Peter