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It is week 30 of this series and 50 Ways to Reduce Your Waste Line completes its third tier (of five) of gradually deeper green suggestions on each of ten topics. Last week’s topic, “Being,” asked you to consider keeping real plants in your work area.
This week’s topic, “Knowing,” challenges you to extend your understanding of the Zero Waste Bins beyond just yourself to help educate and correct others in their use.
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Why is this so important?
Sheridan’s Zero Waste bins are a primary point-of-contact waste reduction strategy. Waste reduction happens right there, immediately, by the simple act of sorting into the correct bins. However, the bins are sometimes “contaminated” with high proportions of the wrong contents. Here is what we learned from the annual waste audits in 2017:
- Organics bins include 10% of materials that should go in one of the other two bins
- Recycling bins receive 20% to 45% of materials that should go in the other bins
- Landfill bins often contain up to 80% (!) of contents that should be placed in Organics or Recycling
In particular, food waste is a big problem. More than half of the food waste is incorrectly put into the landfill bins. The exact numbers, and more detailed analysis, are available in our Waste Audits. These numbers are of particular importance because when there is too much content contamination in the waste collected that are intended for organic or mixed recycling processing, the whole lot ends up in landfill.
YOU are the key to making an immediate change in these numbers—through your own sorting and, even more impactfully, through intervening to help others use them properly. All you need to do is encourage others to take a moment to study and follow the signs at the bins to sort waste. As well, one of the biggest offenders is coffee cups and lids. So why not start there: cups in Organics; lids and sleeves in Recycling. Whenever you see someone at the Zero Waste bins, gently and courteously assist them to sort properly… most will tell you “Thank You!” and that they just weren’t aware of what the correct bins were.
Share your knowledge – don’t keep it to yourself. Would you like to be a Zero Waste bin expert? Use this interactive web page, What Goes Where?, to quickly check what materials go in which bin. If want to take it a step further, maybe even “adopt” a Zero Waste bin near you. Keep a watch on its use. Perhaps even supplement the signage with samples/examples to help people sort effectively and quickly.
To learn more about how well Canadians are recycling their waste and the resulting costs of waste contamination, please read this latest CBC news article.
