Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,
On this show I had a visit from Larraine Roulston, Director, Recycling Council of Ontario, a lady who really believes we can do so much more than we are doing now. She believes in consumer pressure on municipalities to put in place and improve recycling programs, pressure on businesses to reduce the packaging they produce with products and pressure on stores to support suppliers who are more ecologically responsible. We need to work on our own ecological efforts and keep pressure on the whole system at the same time.
She is strong on the idea that 'Recycle' is the last of the 3 R's, and even composting, a form of Reusing, comes before resorting to the garbage bag. Start by Reducing what you collect, then Reuse what you can. Then use the municipal Recycling programs and then the Garbage bag.
REDUCE
Over packaging is one of the main problems. The council is working with manufacturers to reduce packaging, or at least make the packaging recyclable. She is looking for consumer demand to help out -- at the store and at the supermarket. Several years ago I was vacationing in Germany and we decided to chance a trip to the grocery store. We couldn't read any packages, or talk to anyone, they spoke neither English nor French, but that was fun. Then we got to the modern check-out counter and discovered that we had to stuff our winter coat pockets with all our groceries because we had not brought our own cloth grocery bag. The store had no bags at all, and they thought we were rather uncivilized to not have brought our own. It was actually kind of funny as the clerks helped us stuff carrots and the like into coat pockets. In Montreal my wife and I regularly choose a paper bag, just to have something to put our recycled newspapers in, collect just enough plastic bags for all our small waste baskets and have just started using cloth bags for the basic shopping. It is taking a while, but we are learning to adapt to new ways to do things.
Lorraine also had the interesting suggestion of taking your own coffee mug around with you to meetings and the like, to avoid using disposable cups.
REUSE
I asked Larraine which recycling box should be used for old shoes. She said none, Reuse old clothing and toys by sending them on to the Goodwill and other industries which rebuild and recondition things for less fortunate families. If you can't reuse something yourself, perhaps someone else can. Think it through.
Did you know that disposable diapers is one of the major problems in land fills, because of the volume. Some land fills are even forbidding the dumping of disposable diapers. Good old fashioned cloth diapers still exist. And when they are really worn out, they make the best totally lint free finishing rags for the workshop! After my kids grew up, I bought them by the bag from a commercial finishing supply store.
Composting can divert over 1/3 of all household waste when you include yard trimmings. One interesting note: plastic egg cartons are not recyclable, and the paper egg cartons have fibres that are too short to be of much use in remaking paper, but those short fibres make paper cartons great for use in the composting bin.
RECYCLE
Most packaging has a little recycling triangle, like the one in the photo above, with a number in the middle. Check your local municipal recycling information to know which numbers can be recycled in your local program, and re-read that list every year because they are taking more and more catagories as their installations improve.
All municipalities will recycle #1 items. Most take #2.
Yogurt containers are a #5 and only some municipalities can do anything useful with those containers.
Waxed juice and milk containers do not go into the paper bin, but can be put in most municipal recycling programs -- check the numbers.
Paper: books are good for recycling but you have to remove plastic and metal spiral bindings. The same goes for the little plastic passageway in Kleenex boxes.
Off the cuff, I asked Larraine how Canada was doing for the three R's in 2003. Unfortunately, Ontario is about the worst. BC, NS and PEI are going great. Edmonton and Halifax are leading cities. In general, things happen where homeowners push to have them happen.