Living Green in the Great White North –Recycling

Last spring as we prepared for our move north, we talked about what life was probably going to be like here. For ManNorth, this wasn’t going to be new, having lived in northern areas of Canada for much of his life. For me, having grown up in a suburb of a big city and moving away from another one, I knew that there would be quite a few novelties.

Among other things unique to living in a remote area and in a small town, I knew to expect our grocery bill to rise significantly (and one of these days, I really will finally blog about that) but I hadn’t anticipated encountering a challenge to my daily routine involving living greenly, as it seems to be put by the media these days. I wrote earlier about using cloth shopping bags in place of disposable plastic bags to reduce my use of petroleum products and the number of bags I send to the local landfill and I mentioned how ManNorth and I seem to be the only non-plastic bag shoppers in Northern Town. The idea of course, is that a simple way of reducing the amount of trash being sent to our landfills and incinerators and also ideally reducing the amount of energy needed to create new products, is by removing what can be reused or recycled from our waste, and this of course, involves much more than simply using cloth shopping bags. Recycling programs exist in most Canadian communities, but what type of recycling they offer will vary from place to place.

In Prairie Town, I was an avid recycler, keeping all products that could be recycled out of our trash and even going so far as to rip the little plastic windows out of mailing envelopes so that I could put the envelopes in with my paper recycling. Prairie Town had a decent system for recycling cardboard, paper and aluminum and glass food containers, usually by placing a few huge storage bins for each type of recycling in the corner of a mall or grocery story parking lot and leaving it to the city residents to collect and drop off their recyclables. We could even be paid back the deposit fees incurred when we first purchased specific products if we returned the correct items to a recycling station. Deposit returns were offered for most beverage containers, such as aluminum pop and beer cans, juice and alcohol bottles as well as some plastic containers at provincially run stations that also provide employment for persons with disabilities. In addition, these stations also take some other plastics such as milk jugs as well as old paints and computer and electrical equipment for recycling although without any rebate to the person dropping them off.

For those wishing to be paid back for their empties or who simply believe in the benefits of recycling (or who just don’t want to see those items being buried in a landfill), this system isn’t perfect, but it allows them to recycle most items that can be recycled. For a fee, some independent companies in Prairie Town offer to pick up these types of recycling items at the roadside once a week, saving their customers the hassle of dropping it off themselves at the various stations and bins. Some of these companies also recycle more types of plastic than the provincially run stations, which can be an added benefit, given that customers must pay for the pick-up service. The convenience factor of roadside pickup was certainly was attractive but so was the monetary rebate from doing it myself and I so I usually waited until our recycling bins and boxes were full to overflowing before I hauled them all out for one big and slightly sticky and smelly errand run.

In Hometown back east, recycling was more commonplace and also expected of citizens as curb-side home pickup of recyclables by the town was the norm although no one but the town received payment for recycling anything, unless bringing in aluminum pop cans directly to a recycling depot. (Some enterprising souls have occasionally decided to steal cans from these curb-side bins, thus ensuring that the cans were still recycled but preventing the town from benefiting financially from the recycling rebate. I believe that a few of these people have since faced charges of theft for these actions.)

"To the point, to the point", you say. (I'm getting there!)

I was curious about what kind of recycling (if any) occurs in Northern Town. I did notice that some of the metal waste bins placed along sidewalks in a few parts of town do have special slots for aluminum cans and glass bottles so that passers-by can choose to recycle their beverage containers instead of throwing them out, but there aren't many of these and they are designed solely as a convenience for people walking by. There is neither recycling pickup or bins available at our apartment and although the town newsletter routinely reminds citizens to break down their cardboard, no mention is ever made of where to recycle it or even where to bring recycleables in town.

Who empties the bins, where do the bottles and cans end up and what the average home owner does with their recyclables wasn't initially clear when we first arrived. I searched online for recycling in Northern Town and could only come up with links to a dysfunct Recycling Society that folded when overworked volunteers gave up trying to create a recycling station in town after a grant application was denied. I had driven past a building marked Northern Town Bottle Depot however, and after a visit I learned that they collect the bottles and cans from the waste bins around town and are open to receive them from people willing to drop them off. Hurrah, I thought. Now I would have a place to bring my recycling.

Of, course, the words BOTTLE Depot, hadn't really sunk in.

Here in Northern Town, not as many items can be recycled as is common in the south. Most "recycling" (I'll explain the scare quotes at the end) consists of liquor, wine & beer bottles and aluminum pop or beer cans. I was pleased to see a flyer from the Bottle Depot that reminded customers that there are a few other beverage containers that can be recycled and for which a deposit return is offered of a few cents per container:

However, ManNorth and I don’t buy pop, get our juice as frozen concentrate in cardboard cans and although not as a rule, have a dry home as ManNorth doesn’t like alcoholic drinks and although I do, I’ve yet to actually buy or consume any here in Northern Town. This means that none of the products we typically recycle, including cardboard, paper, glass jars and food tins have a place to go, other than to the local landfill.

This is why the office closet on the other side of the room is mostly full of folded cardboard boxes and one box full of paper recycling and why a huge plastic bin and a box are full of used food tins and glass jars in our storage room. I just can’t bear to send them to the landfill and so we’ve decided to store them until we drive them south to be dropped off in a community that will actually recycle them. We won’t make a trip just to drop them off, which would defeat the purpose of saving energy by recycling them, but will bring them if making a trip for another reason. In the meantime, as they continue to pile up, I’ll admit that I’ve thrown out a few cardboard boxes and recently an entire garbage bag full of crumpled newsprint that I used to cover our floor while staining our newly built bookshelf, but I didn’t like it and it didn’t feel right.

The obvious reason that more goods don’t get recycled in Northern Town is that more energy and money would be spent trucking them south than could be recouped from recycling them there, so they are all added to the waste in the landfill. Other communities without road access don’t even have that option and I doubt that anyone would use the space allotted on flights out of their communities for hauling recycling, so no doubt all of their recyclables inevitably end up as trash buried in a landfill.

I don’t know what other people in the community do, nor if they are bothered at throwing out products that could be recycled. I suspect that most people shrug their shoulders and are glad that they don’t have to think about it, since these kinds of recycling aren’t possible here anyhow.

The idea that most people here don’t bother with any sort of recycling has some support as evidenced by a recent discussion by town council in the fall. The issue under debate was whether to continue to allow people to pick through the garbage at the town dump in order to find aluminum cans and liquor bottles which they could then cash in at the bottle depot. A woman who runs the bottle depot in town felt that it was worth it to allow the garbage to be accessed as a significant number of recycling getting to her center was coming from the dump and not from the few small recycling/garbage bins scattered around town.

I spoke with her last week and she said that the town decided to prevent anyone from retrieving recycling from the dump for fear someone would get hurt and the town would be liable.
She shared with me that most people can’t be bothered to even pick out aluminum pop cans from their waste and mentioned the reliance on door to door recycling drives by local community groups to raise cash. (I’ll say that again. The only way to get most of this community to recycle is to pester them at home!)

She also told me that the glass beverage containers collected in the towns recycling bins and by her depot all get dumped into a huge compactor, crushed....and then added to the landfill.

So what do you think? Do you recycle? Do you have any ideas for ManNorth and I regarding our recycling? How important do you feel recycling is and is it worth it for small northern communities to do so? Have at ‘er and let me know!

Living Green in the Great White North - Cloth Shopping Bags

I've decided to write an occasional post about living "greenly" in the north and unique challenges to this that we encounter. Today's topic: shopping bags!

In a time of increased awareness of the detrimental effects of pollutants and waste created by humans and a growing sense of individual responsibility, small changes to our lifestyles may help to make a difference (although see this article for an introduction to one of many related caveats which I won't be discussing today). Growing in popularity by conservation-minded folks are alternatives to plastic bags to carry one’s purchases. Touted as being “ecofriendly”, reusing shopping bags or other containers makes sense at a time when reducing unnecessary consumption can reduce the amount of waste in our landfills among other benefits. In particular, reducing use of petroleum products, such as plastic bags, can be an environmentally friendly thing to do.

I’ll admit straight off that nothing is cost free. We are consumers by nature and by consuming anything there is always going to be a negative cost somewhere to someone or something. By opting to use cloth bags, one is a part of the financial and environmental costs of using land and growing the plants used to make the fabric, actual manufacturing of the fabric and in creating the bag and shipping it to the seller. The idea of course, is that by reusing the bag (or other container) the relevant environmental costs are incurred less frequently and thus overall to a lesser degree, than those incurred by getting a new bag every time one goes shopping and for each product type purchased. By choosing a cloth container (or other readily biodegradable material) over a petroleum product, one is also reducing (not eliminating, mind you) dependency on fossil fuels and the environmental costs incurred through their use. I’m a fan of this strategy and cringe whenever I see products touted by advertisers as being attractive particularly because of their easy disposal.

The “use it once and throw it away” sort of products make me cringe and make me angry. I’m not talking facial tissues and toilet paper here either, which for sanitary reasons and the high environmental costs of laundering, I’m all for using and then throwing out, although I certainly don't require them to be bleached white in order for me to purchase them.) I am talking about such things as using aluminum foil instead of a pot, or a disposable plastic bag for steaming your food in a microwave or a disposable tissue to wipe your floor when a broom will do the trick. Occasional use of these products I understand, but reliance on these sorts of products is wasteful and in my mind, irresponsible. Plastic grocery bags are one of these kinds of products. They are too thin to ever be used more than once and usually only serve to move the food from the store to the consumer’s vehicle and from the vehicle inside their home. One use and then they are trash.

Ah, but they can be recycled, I can hear you saying.

Yes, that’s true. In my experience in both Prairie Town and Home Town, some grocery stores offer to recycle plastic grocery bags and in Prairie Town, one grocery store even charges their customers who opt to use the store’s branded plastic grocery bags. (I’m not sure that this is at all related to attempts to be environmentally friendly so much as it is simply an attempt to recoup the costs of producing the grocery bags. Nevertheless, it can be an incentive to the consumer to bring their own bags or boxes or to buy the newly marketed tiny green cloth “ecobags” for sale in the store.)

They can also be reused to contain household garbage or, a favourite of mine while dog-sitting, for scooping up doggy doo while out exercising the dog. Admittedly, those aren't altogether terrible uses for them, but far far more don't get reused or recycled and far too many end up simply as waste.

In Prairie Town ManNorth and I did our best to carry our groceries in cloth bags and only resorted to plastics bags after forgetting our cloth ones. Usually no one batted an eye at the cloth bags and we never had to worry about plastic handles tearing and spilling our groceries in the parking lot. (The ones with long handles are great as they can be carried over the shoulder, making it much easier to carry a full load. But I digress.)

When I go shopping, I carry the cloth bags rolled up and stuffed into my satchel (those who know me would never call it a purse!) and I happily pull them out at hardware stores, grocery stores, or wherever I buy anything that could remotely be carried in a cloth bag. In Prairie Town, usually no one was surprised if I declined their plastic bags and pulled out my own to bag my own groceries but I have gotten the occasional odd glances at places like Canadian Tire or in bookstores for instance, where presumably the trend to bring your own bags hasn’t quite caught on. I DID get astonished looks in Prairie Town when needing more groceries than I could carry in my cloth bags and thus using my camping backpack and loading it up full to ride home on my bike.

So how well do the cloth bags go over here in Northern Town? I’ll give you one guess!

Yep, I ALWAYS get funny looks when I decline plastic bags in any store in town, no matter if it is a grocery store or not. Strangely enough, the clerks at one of the three grocery stores in town always look put out when I smile and say “No bags please. I have my own.” I even save them the trouble of packing them, which gets me through the till faster as they can ring up my purchases while I bag but they don’t seem to appreciate it much and generally just stare sourly at me. At the second store, I get a smile and cheery conversation while I bag and they scan and at the third store, they barely notice I’m even there, bags or no bags, until I hand them my payment.

At the two hardware stores in town, I’m actually becoming recognized because of the bags even though I'm an infrequent customer there! “Oh yes, you’re the one that doesn’t want bags” a clerk recently declared, smiling at me after I declined the proffered plastic bag for the paint brushes and stain we’d purchased.

Doesn’t anybody else here do this?

This past summer I would occasionally see people walking home with bags and bags of groceries, stopping to repack them as handles broke or looking genuinely pained as the thin plastic handles bit into their palms. I’d confidently march by with my bag (or two or three) comfortably slung over my shoulder and holding about as much as they were carrying, thinking of them sympathetically, but also thinking that they should pay attention to a good idea! (Or use a backpack!)

I want to hear from all of you. Do you use plastic grocery bags? (If so, what do you do with them all? Do you crochet clothing, mats or bags out of them? Do you feel badly about using them or are you fine with it?) Do you use boxes or plastic bins? Do you already use cloth bags? How do clerks or other customers respond if you bring your own container? Would you consider using cloth bags or another alternative to carry your groceries and other purchases? If not, why not? Do tell!

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5:30 PM Update:

Okay, now this is odd. The very day that I get around to blogging about cloth shopping bags and how no one in Northern Town seems to use them, what do I find in my postal box this afternoon but two of these:

They were each part of two 81/2 x 11 inch flyers describing a few ecofriendly products for sale at NorthMart. With every $50 purchase and a coupon, customers can get a free reusable shopping bag. I don't know if these are cloth or plastic but am mildly impressed although I think the flyer was unnecessary waste. A few large signs in the store could do the trick along with coupons ready at the till.

Guess which of the three grocery stores described above is giving away the bags:

Heh. The one with the clerks that would get put out when I used my own cloth bags, which, admittedly aren't nearly as spiffy as the one their store is now giving away. I find this funny.

I'll let you know if their reaction changes the next time I shop there and I'll also keep a watch for other customers using them there and at the other two grocery stores. I wonder if those stores will follow suit?