Unplugged - a new recycling program launches in British Columbia

Starting on October 1st, British Columbians will be able to recycle even more, thanks to the launch of yet another Product Stewardship Program called unplugged.  This is the first of its kind in Canada - a recycling program for small appliances.

Product stewardship programs put the onus of recycling on the producers and manufacturers of products within their respective product category.  Legislation (the Environmental Management Act) requires producers to take responsibility for the life cycle management of their products, including collection and recycling.  There are several programs already in existence: tires, batteries, beverage containers, pharmaceuticals, paint, pesticides, flammables, used oil, and electronics.

Unplugged is really just an extension of the existing electronics recycling program, with new product categories being phased in over time (next phase will include pretty much everything electronic that is not already part of a recycling program - due to be launched on July 1, 2012).

So what does this mean to consumers? As with other stewardship programs, you will notice a recycling fee on your next purchase of a small appliance. This recycling fee goes towards funding the recycling program.  

There are many products accepted in the program - go to the unplugged website to find out about what is included in the recycling program. 

There are three locations in the Thompson-Nicola region that will accept small appliances. In Kamloops, at the Lorne Street Bottle Depot on Halston Avenue, or General Grants North Shore Bottle Depot on Fortune Drive.  In Merritt you can take your appliances to the George Hale Transfer Depot on Clapperton Road.

The Clean Bin Project Tour

I am so excited.  The Clean Bin Project, the story which inspired my family to a waste free lifestyle, is coming to town and with it the filmmakers. It's a dream come true, literally.

Jen and Grant (shown in the photo above) will be coming to town in less than a week and I can hardly wait to meet them.  I saw them present at a Recycling Council of British Columbia conference back in 2009.  They had just completed a year of living without garbage or buying anything.  It was the best part of an amazing conference and I came away completely inspired to some day try it for myself!

Here I am, two years later, blogging about my experience living without waste, and hopefully inspiring others to follow suit.

If you want to check out the film, it will be shown in several locations throughout the Thompson-Nicola region.

The Fresh Outlook Foundation is hosting the REEL Change SustainAbility Film Festival on September 23rd and 24th (check out their website for films and locations).  The Clean Bin Project will be part of the festival and will be screened on September 24th at 7 pm in the Alumni Theatre at Thompson Rivers University.

The TNRD is touring with the film as well so you can check them out at the Chase Community Hall on September 26th, Blackpool Heritage Hall in Clearwater on September 27th, Merritt Civic Centre E. Auditorium on September 28th and the Clinton Community Hall on September 29th. Showtime for these events is 7:15 pm.

Look for posters around town for more details, or you can post a comment and I will reply.

Tomato Festival

This weekend marked the First Annual Friends of the Garden (FOG) Tomato Festival.  I had been going to the meetings with my mother, so I knew well in advance that the festival was coming.  I planted eleven plants in six different varieties.

I got up early on Saturday morning to pick the biggest and ugliest tomato in my garden to enter in a contest (see photo next - mine is the one that the person is holding).  I planted several Beefsteak variety, and these are both big and ugly.  My biggest was just under 2 lbs, which was one of the biggest at the festival - but not the biggest.  The festival itself was wonderful.  Eli and I tasted about 20 varieties, before we had our fill (my favourite are the cherry - so sweet).

My mother was on the crew cutting up the tomatoes for sampling. Several of the variety were heirloom, so she gave me some to take home to save.  Luckily there was a table at the festival with information on saving seeds.  Ferment them in a jar for three days and then strain and dry on a plate, picking them off the plate every now and again while they are drying and when they stop sticking to the plate you know they are dry.  It seems simple enough so I am going to try.

I suppose that it was appropriate that I spent the weekend at home (for the most part), preserving the abundant supply of tomatoes to celebrate the festival. I got this amazing salsa recipe from an old colleague, Bella which I will share with you as it is so simple.

Put 1 tbsp salt, 1 cup vinegar,  1 tsp paprika, 1 medium onion diced, 2 peppers diced (I only used one green as I don't seem to have much luck growing peppers), 1 glove of giant garlic chopped, and 4.5 pounds of chopped tomatoes (3 large beefsteak tomatoes) into a pot and let it simmer for 1 - 1.5 hours (depending on how think you like it).  The recipe makes about 3 - 4 quart sized jars.   Process the jars in a canner for 20 - 30 minutes and voila.  Homemade and homegrown salsa to enjoy all year!

Despicable Disposables

Apologies here but I feel I need to rant a little about disposable products.  I mean really - all the energy and resources that go into making things that are used once and then thrown away! Marketers are cleaver you know - "lets make something that people have to keep buying more and more of so that we can make more profits".  Use it once, throw it away, go buy more.  It's a vicious circle.

Atop my product peeve list are those new pod coffee makers that brew an instant cup of espresso using (non-recyclable) cartridges.  It seems they are the new trend in instant coffee, I was told that the instant coffee tastes better than regular coffee maker coffee, but there are less wasteful options to a great cup of coffee.

A more environmentally friendly alternative to deliciously instant coffee is the Moka Pot, a stovetop espresso maker.  Made of stainless steel, with a rubber or plastic handle, it is very durable and I would be surprise dot ever see one hit a landfill, but if ever it did, it would be in the scrap metal pile. These coffee makers are sold at Fratelli Foods downtown, and proably the big department stores like London Drugs, The Bay and Sears.

Next up are disposable diapers. As a new parent myself not that long ago, I have seen first hand how much waste a little baby can produce by using disposable diapers.  When Eli was first born we used disposable diapers exclusively, as the cloth ones we bought were too big and would rub against her umbilical cord.  I can remember filling up a grocery bag of diapers about every two days, and couldn't wait until the cord healed so that we could put her into the cloth diapers.  By 18 months Eli was potty trained (with the occasional accident) and I think that the early potty training was a result of using cloth diapers.  

I will be the first to admit that cloth diapers require much more effort on the part of the parent (rinse, wash, dry, fold).  I recently found out about Snug Glee Bumz Diaper Service.  It is a little pricier than using disposable diapers but they will come and pick up your dirty diapers once a week and drop off a whole new freshly cleaned set.  You get the benefit of using cloth diapers without the hassle.

Another one of my major peeves are paper napkins and paper towels.  They are everywhere you go - public washrooms, restaurants, coffee shops, kitchen counters, kitchen cupboards, kitchen tables - and almost impossible to avoid.  I have brought several home myself in the past five months. I rip the paper into pieces and put in my backyard compost.  It wouldn't be as bad if everyone composted tissues and napkins. But not even the greenest people I know compost non-recyclable paper. And so what began as a tree in the rainforest of the Amazon will reach the end of its life in a landfill 10 kilometres from home.

No, this is just not sustainable, can't you see? First of all, why do we need to use so much tissue anyways. The other day I ordered a wrap and asked the lady not to wrap it in paper, to just hand me the wrap naked.  No problem, she handed me the wrap without the packaging but proceeded to give me four napkins.  I just sighed and left the napkins on the table, hoping that they would get reused.

Cloth beats paper hands down in any test for quality.  And over the long run reusable products like cloth napkins, dish cloths, tea towels, rags (old cotton t-shirts are perfect) are cheaper.  I am partial to cloth made from bamboo fibre as it has excellent properties (very absorbent, natural anti-bacterial elements, sustainable, and has a silky smooth touch).

Cloth napkins don't require much effort at all.  Unless you have company, you can reuse the same napkin several times before washing.  My mother has napkin holders shaped like different animals; when we have family gatherings for extended periods, each person will get their own napkin to reuse for their stay.

I could go on as there seems to be a disposable version of every product on the market.  The point is that using reusable products (and packaging) just makes more sense.  Don't be fooled by those clever marketers telling you that your life will be easier when you buy their disposable product - you are locking yourself into a cycle of having to keep buying more and more of their product to replace the stuff you keep throwing away.

Good Intentions

Sometimes the best of intentions don't always work out as planned, which can result in waste.  Earlier this week I picked a bunch of beans with the intention of processing them.  I picked and washed the beans and sterilized my jars in preparation to make a small batch of one of my favourite types of pickles - pickled beans - mmmm so yummy. I found one of my mother's old recipes in Home Canning Cook Book, which seemed simple enough. But as you know, plans don't always work out as expected.

Eli woke up early from her nap and was quite insistent that we get outside to play - what little child wants to sit in the kitchen in the heat of the midday summer?  I decided that the beans could wait until that evening.

But the evening came and went, and come Saturday morning, the beans were still sitting in the bucket on the counter where I left them on Tuesday afternoon looking quite shrivelled and dry. I tasted one to see if there was any use in pursuing my intention of making pickles.  It was dry. What a waste! A whole ice cream pail full of home grown beans was about to hit the compost pile because I was too "busy".  And then I had a thought!

I can't remember the variety of bean I have growing in my garden, but I got them (for free) at Seedy Saturday - a seed exchange organized by a local gardening group, usually held in early March. The group promotes local and sustainable food production and encourages conservation of non-hybrid plants through seed saving.  (Seeds of Diversity is a great resource for learning about seed saving). 


Seed saving, what a great idea! I proceeded to husk and place the beans on a drying rack.  Eli helped and within a few minutes of husking we should have enough seeds to grow beans in several gardens in the spring. 


Funny how sometimes bad things work out good.  I like to think of it as good karma ;)

Alternatives to Toilet Paper

It is hard to believe that we have managed to go four months without buying toilet paper, and have just recently run out.  It was something that I discussed with Trevor at the onset of this project - what are we going to do when we run out of toilet paper?  Soft plastics aren't recyclable in Kamloops and toilet paper comes packaged in a plastic bag. Trevor agreed to using cloth wipes, as long as he didn't have to wash them.

The time has come to make the switch and to be honest I am a bit excited about the whole idea of ditching another disposable product.  For the past few years I have been buying toilet paper made from recycled content, which is better than cutting down trees to wipe my you-know-what with, but still requires a lot of resources in its production.  Read this link if you want to know more about how toilet paper is made.

I spent a lot of my early twenties travelling the world.  I somehow managed to settle in Bangkok for a few years teaching English, and while I was there, the only time I used toilet paper was when I was in a fancy restaurant or hotel that provided it.  Bathrooms had either a spray nozzle or bucket of water and some sort of scoop next to the toilet. I never got a lesson in how to wipe my bum, but I assume that the nozzle or scoop is held with the right hand and the left hand is used to wipe.

Many people in our Western society would be appalled at the the rinse method of using the toilet.  But that is a matter of perspective, illustrated by the following story.

Last year our family took a holiday in Thailand.  Elianna was just a baby and still in diapers (as an aside, we did bring cloth diapers with us and washed them daily by hand).  I remember the looks of disgust the Thai women would give me when I changed Eli's poppy diapers using a wet cloth wipe.  When I asked what I was doing wrong, the Thai woman replied "she is still dirty".

If the Thais thought that it was disgusting to wipe a baby's bum with a wet wipe, I wonder how appalled they would be to know that most Western people wipe their bums with a dry piece of paper?

I grew quite accustomed to the rinse method while living in Thailand.  Anyone who uses a bidet would likely agree that it is much cleaner to use a little water - it certainly helps on those occasions when it feels like you have gone through half a roll of toilet paper and are still not clean.

When Eli was born I bought a spray nozzle for our toilet to avoid the dunk method of rinsing poppy diapers, which has served us well.  (The nozzle attaches easily to any toilet and you don't have to be a plumber to hook it up, simply screw an attachment onto the water supply.)  A little spray and a wipe with the cloth and my bum is as clean as a Thai's, and my hands as clean as a Westerner's! Win-win-win.

Garbage Update

Three months of garbage

Our garbage sits on top of the dryer in the hall and has been slowing filling since May 1st.  We use a clear bag so that its contents can be viewed. Every now and again I will sift through the bag and sort out any recyclable or compostable material that gets inadvertently put in the garbage.

I have been very generous about what I put in the compost.  A common mistake with backyard composting is not putting enough "brown" material into the pile.  "Brown" material are things that have a high carbon content, things like shredded paper, dried leaves, and wood chips.  I have been putting stickers, bandaid wrappers, wax paper cut into pieces, Sun Chip bags cut into pieces (they claim to be 100% recyclable), a take-out coffee cup cut into pieces, and any paper that is not recyclable that we acquire (like paper towels from the public washrooms or napkins from a restaurant).

Some waste is hard to control.  People give us garbage all the time, even people who know what we are doing. Whether it is my mother who kindly brings us the contents of her fridge when she goes away on vacation (in plastic bags), or my sister who buys Eli a gift that comes with plastic tags.

The most frustrating thing about living waste free is that we miss out on some of the good deals that come when you make bulk purchases.  I bought some cat food yesterday and the No Name brand that I have been buying in a 1 kg box for about $3.50 also comes in a 6 kg paper bag from $6.98.  Last month I bought the bag, unknowing that the paper bag is actually a composite of paper and plastic, which means that the bag isn't recyclable. Because of this, I opted to buy the 1 kg box and will grudgingly pay the higher price to avoid making waste.

Living waste free definitely comes at a cost - paying a higher price for our food (sort of like eating organic food, which a lot of it is anyway, but even organic food comes wrapped in garbage sometimes).  On the flip side, because we are very conscious about our waste, we tend not to let much food spoil.  (The little food that does spoil gets flushed down the toilet).

Most of the benefits are intangible - the great feeling that comes from living true to myself and my values.  Spending my time and energy doing what I believe in is extremely satisfying.  I won't lie - waste free living requires human effort - preparing shopping bags, washing bags, washing cloths, asking questions, seeking waste-free options - but these are all things that I enjoy doing because it gives me pleasure to know that my effort is for something bigger than myself.

So I will grin and bear the funny looks I get from waitresses when I package all the table waste from our meal out, pay twice the price for cat food, and continue bringing all my waste, recyclables, and compost home with me because it feels good.