ZERO WASTE? DUMPSTER DINING? YOUNG ADVOCATE CHALLENGES EDMONTON ON GARBAGE POLICY
EDMONTON One yogurt container filled with waste — that’s all the garbage Anna Gnida and two roommates produce each week.
They’re part of a Zero Waste movement that’s inspired a new generation of metal-straw toting environmentalists.
Actually Gnida goes further. Like the Zero Waste folks, she refuses to buy anything in packaging that can’t be recycled and refills her own jars when she goes grocery shopping. But you could say she’s waste-negative because most of her fruits, vegetables and bread are rescued from grocery store dumpsters.
It’s stunning what she finds. An entire flat of perfectly good avocados, garbage bags full of clean, fresh artesian bread, perfect tomatoes, slightly brown bananas, lettuce and celery.
She took me on a field trip late last week and I was shocked. There was enough quality produce to feed multiple households in just one dumpster.
At city hall, city council is struggling on the garbage file.
It’s not this council’s fault. The problem is that for a generation, we believed Edmonton’s investment in “world-class technology” made us all-stars.
I say we, because as a community, we totally bought this.
I remember moving to Edmonton, learning and then boasting about how Edmonton’s industrial-scale sorting and compost facilities kept 90 per cent of its waste out of the landfill. Only it was never true.
And now that glass house has shattered.
The recycling facility is 19 years old and can’t sort our mixed-up and crushed curbside blue bags well enough for many companies in North America to use the paper or plastic.
The composter, built to rescue organic kitchen scraps from the black bags, made a product only good enough for mine reclamation because it was contaminated with heavy metal. Also, the building ’s roof failed early.
The new compost and methane production facility is $12 million over budget and two years behind, the waste-to-biofuels facility is now running six years behind. Oh, and don’t forget Greys Paper Recycling, a taxsupported effort to make office paper from recycled fabric that went belly -up.
I don’t know how much Edmonton spent on all that. But counting on technology as the only answer seems like a dicey, pricey option.
So is this a call to go zerowaste?
Oh fudge, I sure hope not. I can’t do it.
I can’t cook everything from scratch. I want to buy at least some of my clothes new, and I’m not dumpster diving.
It’s like reader Elise Campbell said when I posted a photo of Gnida’s tiny trash can on Facebook: “Life is already too damn hard ... Pushing drastic change without accounting for the difficulties we’re already managing is not only a turnoff, it causes backlash.”
On Friday, Zero Waste author Bea Johnson speaks at a local Waste Free Edmonton fundraiser. She’s a French mother whose annual waste fits in an Instagram-worthy glass jar and now tours the world trying to inspire others.
Her blog is full of tips, such as which backpack company honours its unconditional lifetime guarantee. That’s JanSport, if you’re curious. She shops at thrift stores first, then sends her kids to school with binders made of aluminum or cardboard instead of plastic and finds refillable ballpoint pens.
Gnida craves tortilla chips but doesn’t buy them because the packaging can’t be recycled. Butter is her guilty pleasure. It can’t be found in a recyclable container either, so she eats it on toast just as a treat.
I asked her if she feels like it’s really making a difference.
She laughs, not offended. No, per pound, her reduction in waste is making no real difference at all but she’s trying to demonstrate it’s possible. “We can really enjoy life without having a negative impact on the world around us and it’s a lot easier than people think.” It doesn’t sound easy. Edmonton is trying to turn the ship on garbage. Next spring, it hopes to roll out a green bin program for kitchen scraps. That’s the city admitting previous efforts to separate out kitchen waste after residents dump it in the trash isn’t working.
Council is also asking residents to keep yard waste out of the trash. A voluntary program starts next year.
Public engagement on these changes runs until Nov. 15, with a survey and open house locations posted at edmonton.ca/futureofwaste.
Other cities demand more from residents — more sorting, cleaning and bag limits.
But making change in Edmonton will be even more difficult because officials told us for so long that personal effort wasn’t necessary. These really are baby steps council is pitching today. But maybe baby steps are all we can handle.