Get ready for carts!

I've been falling down on the job when it comes to sharing news about those three important Rs and waste reduction lately... my Master Composter/Recycler hat got put on a shelf for a lot of this past pandemic year as it's hard to get out and volunteer when we're not supposed to be meeting in person... and I haven't been a very motivated moodler, either...

But lately, there's lots happening for Edmontonians when it comes to how we deal with the garbage that our living produces. I'd like to note that even, maybe especially with the changes that are coming, it's still incredibly important that we reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can, with an emphasis on reducing. 

The pandemic has helped us reduce our waste in many ways because it's more challenging to safely go shopping, and many of us are learning that we can live just as well with less. I'd like to think that once COVID passes us by, we won't be off on a consumerism binge, but will continue to swap, share and keep our waste to a dull roar. Maybe we can go back to refilling our containers, carrying our travel mugs, and using our reusable everything (I've been trying to do those things as much as possible anyway, but it's definitely been more of a challenge thanks to the corona virus).

I'm excited to share a couple of videos today about Edmonton's new Waste Strategy, which is beginning its roll out this month. Our city rested on its laurels a bit too long while some of the municipalities around us already adopted garbage and green carts, but we're finally catching up, and it's a good thing! It means that our waste collectors will be able to use automated trucks rather than having to lift thousands of bags of garbage each day, saving their sore muscles. 

It also means thousands of tons of organic waste can be diverted from the landfill and turned into compost, and I hope it also means that more people will Go Bagless, that is, stop collecting grass clippings and choose to mulch for the sake of healthier lawns. And hey, if home owners are sorting things into their green carts anyway, it only takes a phone call or text for a Master Composter/Recycler volunteer like me to pay a socially-distanced visit and help set up a compost bin with the contents of a green cart. That compost will do wonders for your lawn or garden patches!

It's all good, really, it will just take a bit of getting used to. So if you haven't heard much about the new carts, and would like to learn more, consider attending an online cart rollout session so you know what's up. Have a peek at the short videos below. And if you want some hands-on help or you have questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment in the box below -- I'd be happy to help. That's what Master Composter/Recyclers are for!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVIZNF4WT_4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLmzMNuvF24

Simple Suggestion #270... Shop like a hunter

Have you seen this sign?

I don't think that way. I love shopping with my hubby. He and I are what you might call hunter-shoppers, like the first human beings were hunter-gatherers, and we like it that way.

What I mean is that when we shop, we don't waste time or energy on wandering around window shopping and getting side-tracked by stuff that we don't need. We make a list of what's necessary, imagine the most efficient route to get to the places we need to go, and tick things off the list as we collect them.

For example, last weekend, we needed a few groceries, a replacement part for a broken blade on my food processor, two watch battery replacements, and Lee needed some new pants. I wasn't sure we could accomplish all that in the two hours we had before I needed to get home for a music rehearsal. But Lee was determined.

So we stopped at a parts place for the food processor blade (tick one) on our way to a watch repair place. While the lady there needed twenty minutes to replace our watch batteries (tick two), we crossed the parking lot to a grocery store (tick three). Then we drove a little further and found a men's wear store where Lee got his new pants (tick four). We made it home with ten extra minutes for me to grab a bite before practicing music.

What's so great about that? 

We took less than two hours to complete four errands and came home with exactly what we needed, no more and no less. Our trip was efficient, used as little fossil fuel as we could manage, didn't cost more than we'd budgeted, and incurred no extra consumption of the planet's resources than was necessary.

Shopping has become a pastime for many people in North America -- we've become a society that fills our homes to the rafters and garages to the driveways with unnecessary things, all of which will have to go somewhere else when we go. Lee and I used to be like that, but since we began to practice Voluntary Simplicity, we've changed our ways.

Shopping like a hunter means determining what's required and getting it and only it, so that we aren't adding to the earth's burden of wasted resources and have more time for doing the things that make us truly happy. We know that "They who die with the most toys add the most to the landfill" and rather than doing that, we can think of people we'd like to spend more time with, activities or recipes we've always wanted to try, books we've always wanted to read, et cetera, et cetera...

As Lee says when we are shopping, "Get in. Get out. Get on with better things."

A critical time for reducing waste

Waste reduction week 2017 (October 16-22) was just a few weeks ago, and since then, city managers have discovered that part of our  Edmonton Waste Management Centre of Excellence is having some structural problems. The snowfall on the aging roof of the Composting Facility's 18-year-old aeration hall, a building large enough to hold 2.3 CFL-sized football fields, has rendered the building unsafe.

This means that all of the city's waste, including our organic compostable kitchen scraps, now must be trucked 85 km down the road to the landfill at Ryley, AB, until a solution can be found. In the meantime, Edmontonians need to do everything we can to reduce our waste. Recyclable materials will still be recycled -- it's the things that can't be recycled that we should give more consideration.

Do you know where your garbage goes? How many fossil fuel emissions are involved in getting it to its destination? If you've never given the idea of composting a thought, now's the time to do it. If there's a corner of your yard where you can put a compost bin that you can fill with organic kitchen waste (plant matter, vegetable peelings, fruit cores, coffee grounds, tea leaves, etc.) over the winter, now's the time to do it. If you'd rather start composting in the spring, compostable waste can be frozen in an outdoor plastic garbage can until things warm up. The Compost' S cool website has different ideas to help homeowners reduce the compostable part of their garbage, and our libraries have many resources about composting and recycling ideas.

As for the non-compostable stuff, in Edmonton we need to make sure that we're making full use of our blue bags for recycling, Eco-Stations for electronics, chemical waste and large items, the Reuse Directory -- which lists charity organizations that accept reusable items -- and Edmonton's own ReUse Centre. Other cities and towns have their own ways of reducing the tonnage that goes to landfill -- for many Canadians it's just a matter of doing a little research and jumping on board with the good planning that's already in place.

But probably the most important thing we can do is question ourselves every time we are about to dispose of something. We need to ask ourselves: Is this really garbage? Is it still usable in any way? Can it be repaired? Would someone else be able to use it? Should I throw it away or find a different way to get rid of it?

And we need to question ourselves every time we go shopping, whether it be for groceries or other household needs. Again we can ask ourselves: Do I really need this right now? Can I wait a little longer for it? Is there a way to buy it without so much packaging? and other questions, depending on the item...

Now is a critical time for reducing waste in our city, but really every day should be. It's simply good practice to keep waste reduction in mind at all times because all of the "leftovers" in our lives will have to go somewhere else eventually, even once this problem with the Compost Facility is fixed. It's always better if our things can be passed on, composted, or recycled rather than ending up in a landfill 85 km away!

Simple Suggestion #254... Have waste-less dinner parties

One of the things that drives me crazy about large family gatherings is the tendency to pull out the paper plates, plastic utensils and disposable cups. Garbage bags full of them end up in the landfill every year, and though it's convenient, it's just not necessary -- besides, that kind of waste of resources in single-use items is not good for our planet.

SuperSu to the rescue! She's one of my Simplicity Sisters (@redworm_mama for you tweeters) and she's brilliant. She came up with the Party Box -- well, two of them, actually, and she lent them to me for our Canada Day party tomorrow.

Here's what you get when you borrow Supersu's party box:

Everything in the box was either purchased at a thrift store/garage sale, or made/donated by Su herself. Much of it may have ended up in the trash, but she rescued it from ignominy and now it's keeping all those other single-use party items from even being purchased and used only once before the long drive to the landfill. And it's a very festive looking collection, as you can see by the pictures below.

The cloth napkins (mostly made by Su) say "Use Su's", and don't you love the host/hostess' apron? There's a cute little apron for a child host/hostess, too. The utensils are sturdy plastic or good old-fashioned metal silverware/flatware of different kinds, and you'd be hard pressed to set a matching table for more than six people... but the variety makes for a very festive looking gathering, don't you agree? (The reusable cups are mine -- it would be hard to fit them into the boxes.) This is only fourteen place settings -- you could easily feed fifty or more with the dishes/utensils in these two boxes.

As a Master Composter/Recycler, Sue is into reducing, reusing and recycling in a big way, and she's a strong supporter of the sharing economy. Her party boxes are available for loan if you live in the Edmonton area and can pick up/return them on your own steam. She can be reached at supersu @shaw.ca. And if you don't live nearby, maybe you'd consider starting a party box for the sharing economy where you are. 

Wasteless parties are the new black, so there!

July 2nd, the morning after the party...

A good time was had by all at our Canada Day party. 23 people came, we sang our anthem in both official languages, the food was delish, and there was no big black garbage bag of single-use so-called disposable items going out the back door at the end of the night. Not even one paper napkin! I told everyone about the party boxes during our "Fun Facts" icebreaker, and one of my friends said that "Supersu deserves an award."

But knowing my humble friend, she's feeling the love just by knowing that she's making a difference and planting the seeds for future wasteless parties. Some of my friends are now planning to dig out those plastic dishes and unmatching utensils and make party boxes to be shared around their clans for larger family gatherings, too.

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #249... Attend an education session

Life is about learning, when you really think about it. We don't stop learning until we die. But often we think that once we're done with school, college or university, we're done. Sure, we can get a book from the library or watch a TV documentary to learn about subjects we're interested in, but our formal communal learning is over.

That's why I'm making this week's Simple Suggestion, thanks to a nudge from my friend Debbie. She's on the organizing committee for an education session on food waste and the practical steps we can take as a society to reduce it. It's open to all Edmontonians, and it's an opportunity to get together and learn in a more active way. There's no final exam, and hopefully we'll all take away some ideas of how we can use food in a more sustainable way and waste a lot less.

Here are the details:

Come celebrate Earth Day!
Friday, April 22 @
Trinity United Church
8810 Meadowlark Road
Edmonton

Join the Food Justice Team @ Trinity United
for a screening of Just Eat It

Just Eat It is a Canadian Story about food waste
and a look at how we might make changes
for the sake of the environment and food security.

6:30 pm Doors open
7:00 pm Screening of Just Eat It
Question and Answer to follow

Admission is pay what you can,
and tickets are available through Eventbrite.

There are probably dozens, if not hundreds of other opportunities to gather and learn within our communities -- it's just a matter of looking for them on community poster boards, websites, and newsletters. The Just Eat It website alone offers a listing of many similar sessions across Canada and the US. What I'm really looking forward to at the session above is the Question and Answer, when we take what the documentary offers and apply it to our own situation in Edmonton. When enough people know about how we can reduce food waste, things will begin to change. The tipping point toward sustainability can't be that far off, can it?

And this is just one example, one topic out of zillions of possibilities for educating ourselves and our communities. We never stop learning, but I find that an experience of attending an education session and learning with others stays with me longer than any TV documentary you care to name. How about you?

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Simple Suggestion #232... Make your own yogurt

My sisters always tease me for having a strange capacity for odd memories. Well, here's another one...

I remember the first time I tasted yogurt. I was 14, and our family was waiting for a ferry on the BC coast to take us to Vancouver Island. Everyone went to the snack shop for treats, and mine was the most exotic of the group's -- peach yogurt. For whatever reason, we hadn't been yogurt people up to that point. At first, I wasn't sure I liked the sour milk undertone, but by the time the little container was empty, I was wishing for more. I was a convert.

I still love yogurt, but I have two major issues with the stuff you buy at the store:

1) The packaging. Every time you bring a container of yogurt home, you're stuck with a plastic container. I know, I know, they can be reused for all sorts of things -- kids' crayons, dog food, plants, you-name-it, but most of us have only so many places we'll employ them before they start piling up. Fortunately, in Edmonton, our Reuse Centre takes certain sizes of containers to be reused by daycares and playschools and people who need them.

They're also recyclable, especially here in Edmonton with our state of the art recycling facilities. But as with most recycling processes, plastic recycling requires a lot of energy, and every time it's recycled, the original product tends to lose quality. Better not to have those containers at all!

2) I have juvenile diabetes, and store-bought yogurt contains way too much sugar -- or sweetener related chemicals -- for my liking.

Fortunately, I have learned a better way to get my yogurt fix, thanks to my friends, awesome MCR and tweeter SuperSu, and her neighbour, Diane, who both taught me a few tricks at our Simplicity Study Circle last year. Making yogurt is easier than I would have believed. Here's how I do it (according to their suggestions/advice):

1. Warm some milk on the stove top to no more than 170 degrees F (75 C) -- not being a candy maker (for obvious, diabetes-related reasons), I had to go buy a candy thermometer for $7, but it was the difference between good yogurt and a mess, so well worth the money. (I discovered , a few times, that accidentally boiled milk makes something more like cheese curds than yogurt, and you can't reuse that product as feed stock for your next batch -- it won't work.)

2. Let the milk cool to 110 degrees, and then spoon in some natural (plain) yogurt that has active bacterial cultures. I used a 2% milk fat variety to start and put in one tablespoon (15 mL) of yogurt per cup (250 mL) of milk. (More isn't better in this case -- putting in too much starter yogurt doesn't make your yogurt any thicker, it just crowds the yogurt bacteria, or so I read on one of the websites SuperSu shared with me).

3. Warm the oven slightly, wrap the yogurt pot in a towel, and set it in the warmed oven (with the oven light on) over night. I tend to make mine before I go to bed, as I like to use my oven some days, but any time of day works, and you don't have to use an oven, though it's important to keep the batch warm. Click here for a website about slow cooker yogurt.

After several hours (about eight in my case), presto, fresh yogurt... that I package into the same plastic yogurt containers I've been using for the last four months, being sure to set aside enough for my next batch of yogurt. So -- I'm not bringing home a plastic container plus a milk carton a week, only the milk carton. Therefore, a bit of a reduction in waste. And there are fewer fossil fuel emissions in my yogurt making (no strawberries trucked from California). And it costs about a third (or less) of what store yogurt costs to make the same amount.

Of course, the yogurt I'm making is not quite the same as the thick and creamy stuff with fruit syrups that you find in the grocery store, which have cornstarch, cream, gelatin, vitamin D, and all sorts of other things added. If you like your yogurt thicker, a fine cheesecloth would be helpful to remove more of the whey water, or so a friend from India tells me. Or you can follow Sue's tip in the comment section below, adding skim milk powder to the mix before letting it set.

But I like mine as is, with cereal or in smoothies -- which have become my favourite breakfast meal because I can use a piece of banana for sweetness and a few frozen Evans cherries from my sisters' tree for colour, maybe mix in a few sprouts that I grow on the windowsill for extra nutrients and blend it all up. And with the honeyberries, raspberries and saskatoon berries that are growing in our yard, I'm looking forward to more yogurt smoothie flavours this summer.

Yogurt making is one more small, self-reliant step I can take in my own food production, one that cuts down on the over abundance of plastic in my life, and it's much simpler than I imagined.

I doff my hat to wise women Diane and Sue for sharing their wisdom with me! And pass it along to you!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #187... Take your travel mug

Sometimes I wonder if some people think of their paper coffee cups as a status symbol -- like it somehow makes them feel "cooler than average" to walk around carrying a brand-name cup of java. More than likely, they just don't think about doing things differently. But MetroVancouver has created a wonderful little video to point out the wastefulness inherent in those convenient, single use cups... Thanks to Laura H. for bringing it to my attention!

This week's challenge?? Make it a personal rule that if you want a coffee-shop cup of coffee, it has to be in a reusable (or travel) mug... every time. Enjoy your joe while thumbing your nose at waste and intentionally depriving the landfill!

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