Finding waste solutions close to home in London, ON.
This week we’re looking at local practical solutions to common zero-waste hurdles. From how to up your recycle game to where to compost while living in an apartment complex, your questions are answered with the listicle below:
The city of London has a compost program through their “Green Weeks” collection pickups. These weeks are for your yard waste, pumpkins and Christmas trees. You can keep an eye on when those weeks are on the City's website.
♻️ Sharewaste app
Don’t want to wait for the city’s composting program to launch? That’s alright, there’s likely a composter near you. That’s right, you can use Sharewaste’s search to find composting neighbours in your area! Locating a neighbour with a composter has never been so easy. Information on their website and App are easily accessible. So, get outside and meet some folks making soil rich in nutrients again.
The app is available on both Android and iOS for free. Want to check out their website first? See it here at www.sharewaste.com
♻️ Local agriculturalists
Urban Roots also has a compost program. Accepting all produce scraps and eggshells at their 21 Nolan Ave London, ON location. Dropping off compost is a pretty simple process. Bring your scraps in a bucket and they will weigh it, add the compost to their pile, wash and rinse your bucket for you to use again. Easy.
♻️ Want to keep your compost all to yourself? Awesome!
TREA is a fantastic local resource for all things lowering waste and environmental practices. Their aim is for a sustainable community. Composting at home is perfectly achievable both indoors and outdoors! Done in a few easy steps, for a lifelong commitment to nourishing soil.
First, pick the right composter albeit indoors or outdoors. Once you picked the best composter for your needs, create a 10-15cm bed of shredded newspaper or leaves. Then add an equal layer of nitrogen rich organics such as grass clippings or food scraps. You may want to add a thin layer of sawdust, soil or leaves on top to discourage fruit flies and unpleasant smells. Notice your compost layer is thick?
That’s okay, just add some extra leaves and mix to create some airspace for the material to breakdown. The goal is to have equal brown and green ratio. Ie. Whenever you put in compost add an equal amount of leaves or shredded paper.
Now you have your own active compost!
For more information, see the Composting 101 guide on TREA’s website.
♻️ Friendlier
Formerly known as A Friendlier Company, Friendlier is doing their best to make take-out containers more sustainable with their deposit system. The iconic blue containers are found at our store on 206 Piccadilly Street. And also available at a bunch of other businesses around the city, check their Instagrams out:
@Sidetrack.cafe
@Momosatthemarket
@YodasKitchen
@MichaelsontheThames
@pierogi_queenldn
@MidoriSushiBarAndRestaurant
@CompletelyRooted
The Friendlier containers are getting around. So far they have reused 798,979 containers, saving over 46,341kg of single use plastics from the dump and 6,467,256L of water! 👏
Also available as a free app on Android and iOS and on the Friendlier website.
Got questions about recycling in your area? Recycle Coach has the answers.
A wonderful online resource to help up your recycling game who works with local governments. Recycle Coach’s mission is to stop wish-cycling, a major issue of putting things in the recycling bin that are not cleaned or actually recyclable. This wish-cycling causes contamination in the load and creates even more waste.
Using a step system to determine an areas recycling gumption and transparency, London is at a stage 3 which means the City Of London has joined with Recycle Coach to give as much information as possible for the best recycling practices in the city.
Find out more about upping your recycling game here on their website.
♻️ Libraries
A little old fashioned but never out of style: libraries. You want in-depth answers about any topic without staring at a screen for hours? Libraries. Can’t find exactly what you want to find out about? The answer is libraries. Sure there’s the internet, but at a library you can talk to book lovers that can find any handy book to reference. And they always come with the coolest stories that you can’t always find with a quick search. They’re also are a hub for green events, see their community boards for all interesting posts!
Happy zero-waste journey!
Let us know what you think about this post and please tell us if you have any other local solutions on our instagram @reimagine.co or facebook page @reimagineco