Reducing waste at home

Here are six items regularly found in the garbage, that don’t need to be there. If you are looking for where to make a difference today, start with these: 

About a third of an average household’s garbage is food.

Food scraps rotting in the landfill, without access to oxygen, generate methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gasses cause global warming. 67% of all the methane generated within the Metro Vancouver region comes from landfills.

A lot of resources go into growing food (water, fertilizers, transportation, storage, packaging, energy to cook and clean etc). All this is lost when food is thrown away.

What you can do:

• Reduce the amount of food you throw away. Use Love Food Hate Waste to plan meals and use the food in your fridge efficiently. 

Paper

About 185,000 tonnes, or 13% of the waste is the landfill is paper. Everything from newspapers to flattened cardboard boxes to paper towels. 

What you can do:

• Find alternatives to disposable paper products. For example, use cloths more in the kitchen instead of relying on paper towels (there’s a bit more laundry, but cost savings overall).
• Put tissue paper bags, pizza boxes, and bakery sheets in the compost.
• Keep unwanted paper out of your house.
• Contact Canada Post to halt the delivery of admail.
• All office and home printers should be set to print double-sided.
• Stomp cardboard boxes and packaging flat before putting them in the recycling bin. This will save space in the bin, the trucks and at the recycling facility.
• Avoid paper towel. Choose to use cloths, electric hand dryers and take a towel to the gym.

Plastics​

About 13% of the average household’s garbage is plastic.

Plastic does not go away, ever. At best it breaks down into tiny fragments. 

A lot of the plastic found in the garbage (plastics marked 1, 2, 4 & 5) is recyclable. Plastics are manufactured using fossil fuels, like petroleum or natural gas. Throwing plastic away wastes the fossil fuels that went into manufacturing it. Recycling plastic allows some of this energy to be reclaimed. Find out more about how plastics are recycled 

When plastic bags blow away from a recycling bin, they often make their way to waterways and eventually to the ocean where they interfere with wildlife.

What you can do:

Avoid single-use, disposable products. For examples,

• Go to the butcher counter and have your meat wrapped in paper to avoid polystyrene trays and plastic film.
• Use re-fillable razors for shaving. Often plastic is combined with another material, making it hard to recycle (and disposable razors are an example of this).They cost more initially, but over time save you money.
• Take your own grocery bags. If you rely on plastic, reuse them over and over.
• Pack lunch in reusable containers to avoid plastic sandwich baggies and plastic film.
• Refill a reusable bottle with tap water instead of buying single-use plastic bottles.

You can also:

• Figure out how and where to recycle plastic food packaging near your home (cheese wrappers, bread and produce bags, rice packaging), set up an easy collection place in your kitchen, and commit to using it.
• Learn about different kinds of plastic, and try to choose products that will last. Find out more from the Association of Postconsumer Plastics Recyclers.
• Choose to purchase items made out of recycled material, and support recycling industries. Toys are a great example.
• When you buy plastic items, check the labelling, and choose an option that can be recycled.

Yard Waste

Yard waste continues to turn up in the landfill, and represents over 7% of household garbage per year.

 What you can do:

• Collect yard waste in a bin separate from other garbage. Bring it to the yard waste bin at Nester’s depot April to November daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (weather permitting)
• Do not rake or blow leaves onto the road where they are a slippery hazard to drivers and pedestrians. 

E-waste   

A waste that has become so prolific it got its own name. Although e-waste is only 2% of the total waste in our landfills, it represents about 22,000 tonnes per year. That’s about 100,000 tonnes in 5 years. Valuable and scarce metals like copper can be harvested from ewaste, instead of mining new sources. Plastics can be recycled. Display units are often disposed, but other parts such as audio components can be reused.

The electronics industry is becoming responsive of the waste associated with making, shipping, distributing , packaging and then disposing of e-waste. Ask questions when you purchase new equipment.

What you can do:

• Find out where to take things, and use the certified recycling and safe disposal programs that are available. Speakers, headphones, radios, old phones, batteries, electronic toys and more. Find information at the Electronics Products Recycling Association

Small Volumes – Big Problems

When asked, most of us don’t think we have hazardous waste at home, but we do. Electronics, household cleaners, fluorescent light bulbs, paint, cleaning solutions and other things we use every day contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals.

What you can do:

• Be aware of the list of items that are banned from the region’s landfills, because they are harmful to the environment. 
• Never flush hazardous liquids down the drain or the street sewer - they will end up in our rivers and oceans. Paint, oil, unmarked solvents you’ve found in the shed all go for safe disposal.
• Take Charge: Recycle all your batteries and electronic devices. 
• Make the switch to rechargeable batteries. All you need is a couple of different sized chargers, a few spare batteries and two storage containers marked ‘charged’ and ‘needs charging’ to keep them straight.
• Keep chemicals off your family and out of your home. Choose natural-based cleansers.
• Starting this summer, get the little green disposable propane tanks out of your life. There are mid-sized refillable containers available at handyman stores , which are easier to carry than a full-sized tank off your balcony BBQ.

Source: MetroVancouver.org