Zero Waste is the goal
My 28-year-old son does not hold out much hope for the future of our planet in his lifetime.
I am an optimist and his attitude really bothers me, but a lot of what he says does ring true. Our society is now purchasing more stuff than ever before, and much of it ends up in landfills. I’m trying to figure out a way to inspire my son not to give up, and obviously the first way is by example. Over the past few months I have become much more aware of my own habits of purchasing, what I throw away as waste and how I am recycling. As a family we have always “done our bit” with recycling for the past 20 years. With recent examinations of our lifestyle, I realize that as a family we could be doing so much more. We are good with putting our blue bin curb-side, but anything not accepted in the blue bin program has been going into the garbage because we considered it too much trouble to find out where it can be dropped off for recycling.
If something breaks it was easier to throw it away and buy new rather than to try and fix it. I had my re-usable bags for grocery shopping, but more often than not they were forgotten when I needed them. It is time for me to change some of my attitudes and actions.
I am now making a deliberate effort to make sure my cloth grocery bags are always returned to my vehicle ready for the next stop for shopping, and that means all shopping, not just for groceries. I am starting to realize that the two R’s before Recycle are very important, and I need to pay more than just lip service to Reduce and Reuse. Luckily for me, there is a new working group or committee in Sooke, called Zero Waste Sooke, and you can find them on Facebook.
They are made up of volunteers who are passionate about reducing the amount of waste in Sooke. I know I will learn a lot from this group, and I hope you will follow along in future articles as I learn and share more of what Zero Waste really means.
Wendy O’Connor
