‘Tis the season to make merry with friends and family. And food is such an important part of many holidays this time of year. Perhaps your holiday plans include hosting or co-hosting a festive meal at your home. It can be difficult to have a perfect waste-free event, but we can try with these five tips to make your holiday dinner waste free.
Say NO to plastic cutlery and disposable plates and YES to a “Party Pack”. What is a ”Party Pack” you ask? It’s a separate set of proper dishes – including cutlery, cups, and fabric napkins – you can use when you’re serving more than the usual number of folks. This avoids the need to use disposable tableware, and it looks better as well!
Don’t be afraid to send leftovers home with your guests! Ask them to bring reusable food containers to the party, or dig through your recyclables bin and reuse those peanut butter jars you’ve been saving for collection day.
If your guests insist on bringing a “host gift”, ask for an ingredient in the evening’s meal. Dessert or buns is always an easy one. But if the guest is a whiz in the kitchen, you could also ask them to arrive early and help you with the cooking or setting the table. Spending a little extra time together is a bonus, and it’s always appreciated to get extra help in the kitchen.
When grocery shopping for ingredients, try to minimize single use plastics and food waste. If you make a plan – including choosing recipes – and write a list before you head out shopping, there is a smaller chance that you will waste ingredients either because you purchased too much or you purchased something you don’t need. This also gives you a chance to choose ingredients with less packaging, like fresh produce or refillable items.
Serve a vegetarian or vegan meal. Eating less meat is one of the top ways a change in your diet can help combat the climate crisis (source). There are a lot of really popular and delicious – and easy – vegan recipes online these days that will please all of your guests.
A birthday party kit including plates, utensils, and napkins – all waste free!
If holiday values for you means gathering with friends and family, you can impart some of your climate and waste free values to them at the same time. With a little creativity and time you can ensure the meal is low waste, or waste free. It’s the time spent together that is the most important part anyway.
“Every single-use item, regardless of what it is made of, carries an environmental cost.” (Source). According to the City itself, this is one of the main reasons they are not specifically singling out plastics in the SUI bylaw. Simply replacing plastic with other items – such as paper, bamboo, or metal – ignores the very serious amount of waste generated in our city every year. According to the City’s estimates, Edmontonians throw out 450 million single use items every year (Source). By expanding the scope of the bylaw beyond plastics, we also have the opportunity to expand the creative long-term solutions.
It is understandable why folks have questions about including non-plastic items, or are skeptical about the ability of a bylaw such as this to table our waste problem. Business owners are concerned about their bottom line, their employees safety, and their customers’ satisfaction. City dwellers wonder how this will impact their trips to the grocery store, meeting friends for lunch, and their already tight monthly budget. Single-use plastic is something many of us recognize and understand already, but adding in all single-use items can feel overwhelming. Looking at the big picture – why the City is pursuing this – can help place ourselves within that big picture. And help us work on pursuing those goals as a community.
The City of Edmonton offers three reasons it is moving beyond plastics: (Source)
Greenhouse gas emissions throughout the items’ lifecycles
Landfill space
Degrading natural habitat if these items become litter
By looking at the larger impacts of single-use items on the climate crisis, and how the City fits into the global system as a whole, they could easily add the following:
Garbage is garbage, no matter the material
Waste of resources
Help to create a circular economy
Let’s examine each in turn, and explore not only the importance of a more holistic approach, but the positive opportunities offered thanks to these efforts.
Most folks understand that we live on a finite planet, with finite resources. But it is perhaps less common knowledge that we can put a number on that. Humans use 73% more resources per year than the Earth produces. (source) The way our modern lives have been structured often favour ease over consideration. All single-use items carry an energy price tag. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, which often show up throughout their life cycles. In order to cut out those greenhouse gases, or at least dramatically reduce them, we must make (and be offered) better choices.
Take reusables for example. These single-use item stand-ins still take resources to produce and distribute, but they are designed to have a longer life span. And many are also designed to be easier to recycle or repurpose as well, a metal or glass food container for example. Single-use item bylaws can encourage swaps to those items, and if the restrictions are limited to plastic only, a lot of innovative products – and waste reduction – would be missed.
If we look at all single-use items as a waste of resources, a holistic bylaw encourages use of our finite resources in a way that best serves everyone in the long-run.
While looking at these items as a waste of resources, we must also zoom out and consider our land a resource as well. Landfill space is at a premium. (read more on that here) An item that is designed to be, or at least perceived to be used only once (regardless of the material), automatically takes up this valuable space as soon as it is produced. Replacing plastic waste with bamboo, paper, or bio-plastics without addressing the single-use aspect of those items ignores this reality.
When it comes to taking up space in a landfill or degrading natural habits as litter, all single-use items are created equal. We often hear that plastic is “bad” and are encouraged to focus our attention on reducing plastic waste to the exclusion of other waste. It gets the most press! While this is absolutely true, plastic is also a really useful material. It’s when we treat it as “cheap” and disposable that we run into trouble.
Many companies have been replacing their unrecyclable, non-reusable to-go containers with other materials, and there is merit to this. This represents only some of the amazing creativity being used to build smarter SUI in terms of materials, energy usage, means of production, local sourcing, etc. We need that creativity, especially as it offers opportunities for wider solutions, and used in concert with a SUI Bylaw, it can have a huge impact. A bylaw targeting all SUI encourages consumers and producers of these items to refocus on mindset toward what we need, and what we will actually use. It can empower us to say “no” and gives consumers and businesses a chance to examine their “garbage shadow”. (Click here for info on a climate shadow).
So we have finite resources, plus we’re using up those precious resources to make and store more garbage. An obvious solution is at hand: the circular economy! A Circular Economy is a systems solution framework that looks to eliminate waste, circulate materials, and regenerate nature. A Circular Economy must look at all areas of output and input, not only plastic. Will Edmonton be creating a Circular Economy with this bylaw? No. But it is taking an important step in this direction and helping to ensure we are more climate resilient in the process.
TAKE ACTION
It can be difficult to know the challenges folks might face once this bylaw comes into effect. But we can try to anticipate some common ones, and make plans today to ensure success in our communities.
Talk about the bylaw with friends, family, and neighbours. The City of Edmonton has created a single page PDF that has a lot of easy to digest information packed into it. Share this, but also share your personal hopes about the bylaw and also what has you worried. “Talking about climate change is the best way to combat it.” (Katherine Hayhoe)
Evaluate where your family unit might struggle with the new bylaw, and start preparing now. For example, by purchasing reusables now as you can afford them and leaving them in the spaces where they will get used most (the trunk of your car, your bicycle basket, etc.).
Maybe you are an entrepreneur who sees the vast opportunities with this type of holistic bylaw targeting our single use waste. There are many places in the world that offer reusable programs at restaurants (in Victoria, B.C. for example) or coffee shops. Imagine the possibilities in Edmonton and start planning!
Single-use items. This is an issue that Waste Free Edmonton has been working on since our inception. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons our founders started the non-profit organization. We have come so far in the past 4 years. It makes sense to celebrate the wins as we get them.
Celebrating wins also entails explaining them to folks in our lives who don’t have the same level of knowledge about climate change and climate actions. The vast majority of Canadians are worried about the effects of climate change, but only half of us self-report understanding of climate change, and what needs to be done to combat it (Source).
If you are reading this, we can assume that you are interested in waste and climate change. And we assume that you talk to your friends and family about those topics. We know that it can be difficult having those conversations, especially with folks who don’t have the same level of knowledge as you. We hope this short guide helps you discuss our latest local climate win: the Plan to Reduce Single-use Items and its bylaw.
Leave Space
Nobody wants to hear a lecture, unless they are paying to go to school! Come informed and ready to listen. This looks like leaving space for the other person to talk and ask questions. And make sure that you are asking questions to understand and clarify, not to respond. And especially not to denigrate their knowledge.
That being said, it’s critically important to discourage climate change denial, fossil fuel company talking points, and racism, which can often come up when discussing current (and historic) climate actions. These are healthy boundaries to set and reinforce. You might not change anyone’s mind, but you can get them thinking about single-use items and the impact they have.
Speak from personal experience
Yes, it’s important to get your facts in about the single-use item plan, but it will be more meaningful – and memorable – if you speak about your personal experience. For example, tell your friend what you are excited about, or nervous about in the new plan. Explain to your Dad how you think this plan will impact your daily life and a trick you’ll use to remember to bring your reusables from home. Share with coworkers why you believe we need a single-use item plan and what this will mean for your weekly team lunch. Connecting the single-use item plan to your daily life will encourage your friends and family to do the same. Chatting in this way allows everyone to explore how the plan will impact them, their community, or their local business, and encourages people to get ready for the bylaw to take effect. And in a larger sense, this gets everyone to start evaluating the impact their actions have on waste in our community.
Since you’re keeping it personal, don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” in response to a question or comment. Remember that you can always refer back to the City’s resources and encourage your friend to email their Councillor directly with questions.
Keep a cool head
Encouraging your friends and family to get curious about how this bylaw might affect them might bring out some strong feelings. Remember, this isn’t your plan so try not to take feedback personally. Recommend they reach out to their Councillor and Mayor if they have tough questions or comments. And if you come up against denialism, politely explain that you are not debating the proven existence of climate change.
Follow Up!
Once it’s had a few days to sink in, follow up after your conversation. Ask if they had any further questions or comments, and list any that you thought of. Send them an email including the link to the plan and a list of emails for City Councillors. Think of your own waste free journey. It probably took awhile for you to learn about waste reduction, and how to translate your knowledge into action. Patience and many conversations within our community are the keys to the success of Edmonton’s single-use item bylaw.
CBC Marketplace came out with a new investigation on poor quality construction and potentially dangerous chemicals found in clothing from several large fast fashion brands. Chemists at the University of Toronto analysed samples from a number of items which were found to contain hazardous levels of lead, phthalates (plasticizers), and PFAS (used in fluorine-based water-repellent treatments). The presence of these chemicals at dangerous levels present hazards all across the supply chain, from the people making the materials, sewing the final products, and both retail and second-hand consumers. One part of CBC’s video shows great examples of poor quality garment construction which you should watch out for when purchasing clothing items (both new and second-hand). But if you don’t have a chemistry lab at home, how can you tell if you’re at risk of exposing yourself to hazardous chemicals?
There are a number of organizations in the textile world who are trying to standardize and streamline this very concern. Examples include Oeko-Tex, The ZDHC Foundation, and Bluesign. These organizations have created what’s called a Restricted Substances List (RSL), which brands and manufactures use as a guideline for which chemicals, and at what levels, are considered safe in textile items. Many brands already advertise compliance to Oeko-Tex and/or Bluesign on their websites and hangtags, which is a quick way to assess the safety of the items you’re purchasing. You can also access a list of Bluesign system partners, companies and manufacturers who create products compliant to that RSL at all stages of production. Canadian companies on that list include Arc’teryx, Canada Goose, lululemon, Mountain Equipment Co-op, and Thomson Research Associates (makers of anti-microbial/anti-odour treatments).
At the end of the day, you get what you pay for! If something seems too good to be true, most of the time it is. We all need clothes, but we hope to arm you with more tools to better assess what you’re consuming. Let’s all buy less, but concentrate our efforts on purchasing good quality items which will last as long as possible and minimize harm to people and the environment.
We’re always talking amongst ourselves at Waste Free Edmonton about waste free tips, new evolutions in waste management, or cool ideas to reduce waste. A mention of an ecobrick drew my attention and drove me to investigate more. An unremarkable plastic bottle like any other I see in the grocery store, filled to the brim with a patchwork of overlapping scraps of colourful plastic. Ecobricks seemed like an interesting way to divert the amount of unrecyclable plastic I throw away, and the tools I needed to start were (mostly) things I already had.
Ecobricks are a way to minimize the environmental impact of plastic. By encasing small amounts of unrecyclable plastic in a sealed container, it keeps the plastic garbage out of a landfill, natural environment, or animal’s stomach. It can also prevent the leaching of microplastics into waterways. Not only that, but with enough ecobricks, larger structures and objects can be assembled and built!
The method is simple. Clean and dry unrecyclable plastic, cut it into smaller pieces, stuff it in a plastic bottle, and pack it down with a long stick. Rotate the bottle as you tamp it down to have an even distribution of plastic around the bottle. Once you can’t fit any more plastic inside and the bottle feels solid to the touch (or weigh it), cap it and you’re done.
The last natural environment this plastic bottle would experience.
Planning started weeks ahead, with the collection of the unrecyclable plastic. I hung onto chip bags, peeled labels off containers, and put aside the occasional candy wrappers. The journey also started with a bit of irony — to have an ecobrick, I needed a plastic bottle. Buying a one litre bottle of sparkling water that I otherwise wouldn’t. I aimed for a one litre, cylindrical bottle that would be an even building block, with no sloping sides, etching, or raised type. Another thing I had to remember was not to throw away the lid, a hard habit to break.
Once I had an empty bottle, a heap of plastic, and a long dowel, I was ready to go. It was amazing to see a big bag of plastic food bags and labels, occupying a large volume when I put them aside for an ecobrick, gradually get crushed into a smaller space without any real effort. I began to worry that I might not have enough plastic to fill the ecobrick with.
Cutting up all the plastic was also a meditative experience. It made me think about a number of things:
While I didn’t make the plastic, I did purchase it. Was there a plastic free alternative I could have chosen instead?
There were nonrecyclable plastic labels from recyclable containers. Is a product truly recyclable if not all of its components can be recycled?
When fully packed down, the contents of this bottle are only a couple centimetres high!
There are a few ways to determine whether your ecobrick is finished: squeezing the bottle to test your grip strength, putting weight on it to see if the bottle bends, or simply eyeballing it. Once it’s done, just cap it! Having gotten used to the feel of an empty plastic bottle over the last couple decades, the heft of a completed ecobrick is something totally new.
Tips:
Cleaning plastic was tougher than I thought. At the beginning, I would swish hot, soapy water around the bag to clean it out. As it dried, I realized that wasn’t enough. There was always grease and salt left behind. I began inverting the bags and wiping down the inside with a cloth, cleaning and drying them at the same time.
The bottom of the ecobrick is the trickiest part. Much like actual construction, you need to start off with a solid base. In this context, finding the right plastic was critical. If the plastic was too large, it would be harder to tamp down with my dowel, and I didn’t cut my plastic small enough on my first attempt. I chose candy wrappers on my second try, which are small, hard plastic, consistently sized, and in enough quantity to ensure symmetry all around the base.
A finished ecobrick, When squeezed, there will be no give and be solid to the touch.
I learned some important lessons in the making of my first ecobrick.
Unrecyclable plastic is far more common than I previously believed. Maybe it’s because we dispose of unrecyclable plastic so quickly, while recyclable plastic lingers in our blue bag for longer, but forcing myself to hang on to chip bags and wrappers made me look at my role in bringing them into my house more critically. I was diverting plastic away from the trash, but not exactly reducing my consumption.
Creating an ecobrick uses a lot of unrecyclable plastic, and cutting it all up takes time. Seeing familiar brands over and over grew as tiring as the repeated snip of the scissors. Major brands like Coca-Cola, Nestle, Loblaws weren’t helping me pack my ecobrick, they were making more disposable plastics that are intended to be landfilled.
It was a fun exercise, was an introduction into a new way to divert unrecyclable plastic waste, and I may make another one. But at the same time, the best outcome would be no ecobrick at all, in a future where plastic is used responsibly and not polluting our environment.
2020 has been a ridiculous year, one where keeping up with the sheer pace of the news cycle was an achievement in itself. It will be defined forever by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on, well, everything. It’s only in hindsight that we will be able to reflect on its impacts in other areas, particularly waste. There have been glimmers of hope for a waste free future though, and the growing consensus against waste at multiple levels of society and government have been promising to watch.
Here are some of our hopes and resolutions for a 2021 that has to be better.
No more delays on SUP legislation.
2020, for as bad as it was, had mixed messages on the topic of banning single-use plastics. While Edmonton’s progress on the SUP bylaw has been paused, the federal government’s announcement of a 2021 ban was both promising and a reminder that reducing plastic waste should be on the radar of every government. However, banning single-use plastics ‘by the end of 2021’ is vague enough that we expect to be holding governments accountable for their promises. We hope that won’t be the case.
International waste legislation
Our SUP framework will help government officials with their planning and decision making for similar SUP bylaws in their jurisdictions. The best way to achieve waste reduction is through a network of overlapping laws that provide knowledge and experience for other cities and countries looking to reduce waste. The European Union has us beat with a tax on unrecyclable plastic that went live on January 1st! Bans, taxes, and other prohibitions will help stamp out plastic waste slowly, but surely. It’s up to us to use these advances to help waste reduction efforts in Edmonton.
Waste Free Edmonton’s 2018 appearance in Devon.
More opportunities for collaboration, dialogue
We’ve been able to work on communicating the need for waste reduction through our social media and digital meetups, but just being in the same room as someone, talking about waste, hearing and listening how it affects someone and their community provides that energy to push for greater change. We want more community events, repair cafes, field trips, anything to help further integrate waste reduction into our everyday lives.
Continued moves towards local economies
For years, we spoke against online shopping from an emissions standpoint — how much CO₂ was released into the atmosphere to ship that parcel to your door? But Amazon worker strikes helped shed more light on the negative results of mass consumerism and pushed more individuals to think, shop, and act locally. Acknowledging the benefits of circular economies, freecycling, bartering, and local connectivity helps reduce waste and foster community.
A healthy Edmonton
COVID-19’s effects on Edmonton have been painful, and we’re all looking forward to a regression and elimination of the pandemic. As exciting as the recent news on vaccines has been, we don’t know the logistics of vaccination, how it’s going to be implemented in Edmonton, and how long the process will take. What we do know is that there’s no waste reduction without Edmontonians to achieve it. We need to keep our community as healthy as possible in 2021.
I’m sure many of you have noticed the symbols and numbers on the bottom of your plastic bottles and jars. But did you ever think about why those symbols exist, who they benefit, and what they mean?
WHAT ARE THE SYMBOLS FOR?
The numbers indicate what type of resin is used to make that particular plastic, which then corresponds to how the item should be sorted and recycled. This system was created by the Plastics Industry Association in 1988 in part to help plastic recycling companies sort the incoming plastic for resale.
At first glance, it appeared as though the plastic producers were just trying to be helpful, categorizing the type of plastic for future users and making it easier to recycle these items. This is the “great plastic lie”.
These symbols trick consumers into thinking that not only are these goods possible to recycle, that they are actually being recycled. The “chasing arrows” around the numbers traditionally signal “recycle”. These arrows have since been changed to a solid triangle, but the “plastics industry has a vested interest in maintaining this myth.”
And there is a distinct lack of accessible education for individual consumers to make good decisions when shopping. Or when sorting their numbered plastic items for recycling. And unfortunately that often leads to “wishcycling”. Wishcycling is defined as “aspirational recycling”, and happens when a consumer puts a non-recyclable item in their recycle bin not because they know it is recyclable, but because they wish it was. One errant item can contaminate an entire bag or bin.
The misdirection of the symbols combined with the lack of comprehensive education around plastic recycling leads many people to believe they can keep buying plastic because it is being recycled, when in fact it isn’t. They put the burden on downstream individuals and organizations to properly sort and recycle all the plastic being produced. And there is little to no obligation placed on the producers to curb their plastic production or provide funds and infrastructure for recycling initiatives.
CONSEQUENCES
Recycling is labour and resource intensive. It costs money and it’s a lot of work. The Edmonton curbside pickup is a single stream system, where everything goes in the same bag and it’s left to the sorters at the facility to figure it out. And in Edmonton that means sorting it by hand.
Not only is the cost to deal with these products downloaded to residents (through taxes for example) to pay for increased sorting, we also have to deal with the waste in our communities. And environmental racism means this burden does not fall equally among individuals and neighbourhoods. We see these effects across Canada, with landfills often placed in or near Indigenous or predominantly Black communities.
This is the Edmonton Waste Management Centre, where workers try their best to make sense of these recyclables.
TAKE ACTION
But there are ways that individuals and communities can take back control from the plastic producers, and make a difference in the lives of their neighbours.
LOW EFFORT
If you have the resources to do so, buy alternatives to your favourite products that come in glass, metal, or cardboard packaging instead of plastic.
Watch Plastic Wars by the Passionate Eye to learn more about the great plastic lie.
MID EFFORT
Find a list of the types of plastic that your municipality actually accepts for recycling. Edmonton’s list is accessible here, or through the WasteWise app. Bring that with you to the grocery store, and try to avoid items made with plastics that aren’t on your list.
Sort your recyclables at home and take them to a recycling depot in Edmonton instead. The earlier recyclables can be sorted, the cleaner and less opportunity for contamination there will be. Find your nearest recycling depot here.
Reuse the plastic items that aren’t accepted by your municipality for recycling. While avoiding single-use plastics entirely is better, it’s not always feasible. Extend the life of these “single-use” items in creative ways or donate them to those that will.
MOST EFFORT
Learn about extended producer responsibility and write your elected officials to push for it in policy. In short, it holds the manufacturers of products to accountability throughout its entire lifecycle, not leaving customers responsible for the environmental cleanup.
Reach out to your local businesses to ask for more plastic-free options in their packaging.
Start a plastic-free initiative in your workplace or school. Waste Free Edmonton has resources to help you get started!
From a consumer standpoint, going plastic free often starts at the shopping cart. Earth’s General Store is a notable leader in waste free shopping. Photo: MacKenzie Photography
Recycling symbols on the bottom of plastic containers are misleading to consumers, and ultimately puts the burden on individuals to address the plastic waste entering our world, with no responsibility placed back on the plastic producers – the oil and gas industry – and no incentive for them to stop overproducing new plastic. Recycling is not going to save us, and unfortunately it was never designed to. There are ways that consumers and citizens can help, both in their everyday lives and to move toward more systemic change. “The future of a just and green planet relies on every single person, particularly those with access to resources, to take action that calls for larger societal changes.” (Chante Harris)
