|
The Mayne Island Recycling Society (MIRS) "Rethinking" contest will be commencing on July 5, our first Wednesday that the Depot will be open for the summer. To enter the contest, just pick up one of the official entry ballots at the Depot. Complete the ballot with an idea that rethinks the concept of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and bring the ballot back to the Depot on your next recycling visit. Deadline for entries will be Wednesday, August 2. Ballots will be read through by a select group of the Recycling Board and the winner will be announced in the September MayneLiner.
Our Wednesday openings will commence on July 5th, the first Wednesday of the month. Gates will be open from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm. With these new hours the Depot is looking for more volunteers to help with traffic control and sorting. Having personally volunteered at the Depot for the past 13 years, I can attest to how quickly the hours fly by and the gratitude expressed by the persons you help to unload their bins. Bins - a usual means of sorting one's recycling, but a novel concept to some. The Depot used to sell blue bins for $5 but I think you might have to fork out $10+ at Canadian Tire or other hardware stores for a bin, if you can find them. But what about cardboard boxes? They are readily available at the Trading Post or Tru Value and the stores are happy to get rid of them as opposed to having to package them off as their own recycling. And the rewards you will experience will be amazing. Some, only a few, but still some come in to the Depot with all their recycling in a big, green, odoriferous and more often sticky bag. If this is you, I would like to offer you a means of keeping your sleeves clean while speeding up your visit to the Depot. Ask for a couple of bins and dump all of the recycling into the bins. This allows you to see what you are grabbing and to more efficiently distribute your goodies into the correct white totes. Our MIRS AGM was held June 8th. This AGM covered all things AGM's are meant to cover but managed to do so in only 34 minutes. Not that the brevity of a meeting is a measure of success but when wine, beer and munchies are involved, brevity is cherished. Thanks to Don Eadie for chairing the Board this past year (and the brief meeting). We did see some new faces and hopefully acquired some new volunteers for the Depot and the Board. New ideas and inspired energy are always welcome. We look forward to seeing you at the Depot, especially on Wednesdays, throughout the summer and hope to get some great Rethinking ideas for us to consider in our future planning. We have a great deal to share with you this month so off we go. Our Beach Cleanup was a huge success, both in the fact that our beaches are so much cleaner now than they were a month ago, but more importantly, I think, is that predictions were bang on - there was less material brought into the Depot on the Sunday cleanup than last year. I would like to think this is simply people being a bit more responsible about what they might leave on the beaches, on their boats or docks to be blown into the sea, and maybe picking up some of the flotsam they might see on their beach strolls. And the good news continues - much of the material that was collected was sent off-Island to Ocean Legacy who reprocesses the materials into usable goods, thereby keeping the waste out of landfills.
The good news continues. The Mayne Island Recycling Society (MIRS) will be holding the AGM for members on Thursday, June 13th at 4:00 pm at the Adachi Pavilion. It is hoped that some new faces will be there; faces belonging to people who wish to get more involved in the improvement of their Island by taking an active part in making Mayne Island a better and cleaner place to live. This is also the time of year whereby we seek new volunteers for the Depot. These new volunteers are needed to help us to open the Depot on Wednesdays throughout the summer months (see the ad on page 3 of this issue). And the Coup de Resistance - the "Rethinking" contest has been given the go ahead by the MIRS Board to commence this July. I am personally looking forward to receiving new ideas from the many users of the Recycling Depot. These ideas could possibly become common practice once the Board members think them through and perhaps see new ways of doing things. On a more personal level, I will get more fodder for my articles which I know people actually read based on some of the personal feedback I have received. Their comments demonstrate the thinking and rethinking of commonplace practices that so many of us might take for granted. My analysis of individual yogurt servings versus larger tubs of yogurt actually got someone to weigh the amount of plastic in the individual servings versus the large tub. There was less plastic used in the equivalent amount of yogurt. Eye opening for me and obviously thought provoking for the experimenter. The "Rethinking Contest" will commence the first week of July. Official entry ballots can be picked up at the Depot and returned upon your next visit. The deadline will be July 29, last Saturday in July. I will call together a small number of Board members to help me judge the entries and we will announce the winners in the September MayneLiner. I look forward to you sharing your rethinking about recycling with our Depot Board. Happy Recycling - remember to sort your recyclables at home to shorten your visit to the Depot. At my age, thinking, in and of itself, is often difficult, if not painful. But here I am advocating "Rethinking" (sounds like something my mother might have me do because I screwed up the first time). As any physical trainer would have you believe - use it or lose it. Much of what we do in life has been thought out by us or for us.
Maybe we need to continue thinking about these practices (laws included) and constantly remind ourselves of why they are necessary. In terms of recycling, many of the rules and regulations have been determined by city councils, provincial governments and perhaps federal legislation. Here on Mayne Island, we are fortunate to have a very involved group of people who are determined to constantly rethink the recycling process and procedures and to look at better ways of dealing with many of our consumables and their packaging. I look at what our Depot does and the materials that it takes in for recycling and I am awed. The past two summers I have been fortunate enough to visit Alaska (fishing). The fishing part offered a terrific recycling aspect - catch the fish, fillet the fish and return the entrails to the ecosystem for nature to do her part as the eagles, gulls and turkey vultures thrive. Enter man (men) up at the lodge and the number of 500 ml. plastic water bottles, 335 ml. beer cans and plastic wrap from our convenience foods and things start to look quite disgusting. I asked about any recycling programs and those I asked made it clear that there was no money in recycling and therefore there were no programs in effect. In the next few months some of us on Mayne are going to be involved in a beach cleanup. Last year, we pulled a few hundred kilos of waste product from our shoreline. This was my first rodeo, so to speak, and I was told that the amount was considerably less than the previous year. My never-failing faith in mankind hopes that this year will be less than last year. That will likely be because many people have already picked up various pieces of flotsam and jetsam and disposed of it. Wouldn't it be nice if the reason for this year's lesser amount was that there was less garbage disposed of in our oceans or on our shores? Enough of my "Rethinking". I plan to run it past the Board of Mayne Island Recycling Society that we run a contest in the spring/summer. The contest will allow the people of Mayne Island, particularly those who frequent the Depot, to pick up an entry form and submit their own ideas of how the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra might be "Rethought". I would love to be able to write a MayneLiner article sharing some of these ideas but better yet, I would love even more to be able to bring some of these ideas to the Board to see if any of them might be viably implemented at the Depot. You will have to wait with bated breath for next month's article. Time to get onboard the time travel train back to the '70's - disco, muscle cars and the birth of recycling. Yes, I thought recycling started well into the 1980's but the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle theme was born in 1976 (if Wikipedia is to be believed). And this is where the brain cells that have been destroyed over many single malts get jump started. There was another "R" that seems to have been totally forgotten that was an integral part of the recycling mantra - Rethink.
I think that most of us have focused almost totally on the recycle concept. We are proud when we fill our blue bins with assorted packaging materials and bring them in to the Depot. Don't get me wrong here - we are happy you do this on a regular basis. Our landfills are happy and our planet is happy. I am suggesting that we start rethinking this whole concept of the 4 "R's" with a new focus on the thinking part. On our kitchen counter we have a very large box of plastic wrap, the kind you might wrap a sandwich in. I am far too guilty of turning to this as a first resort to cover a bowl of left-overs. Fortunately, my wife turns me to the topsy turvy cupboard filled with Tupperware where on a good day I can match a container with its lid that can hold said leftovers. The box of plastic wrap is destined to live on our counter longer than 1 shall inhabit this planet. In volunteering at the Recycling Depot, I have seen many situations which have spawned a 'Rethinking" moment. Example - a very well-organized tote brought in with dozens of individual serving yogurt containers, all rinsed thoroughly and stacked like lego. Someone's gut flora is very healthy. But if you are eating this much yogurt in your life, surely a larger container of it in your fridge is not going to go bad in the few days it will take you to eat it all. In practicing what I preach, I like to think that my having a kegerator of beer from Mayne Island Brewery is my way of saving the planet from too many beer bottles and cans. (My wife disputes this claim). Just today I read an article in the New York Times about recycling and how the different kinds of plastics are confounding the recycling concept. Some of these plastics are accepted as recyclables while others are not. And sometimes it is the policies of recyclers as to what is acceptable that become the confounding factor. I suggest that there needs to be a constant "rethinking" of these issues to allow for a more sustained and practical practice of recycling that actually works. Continue your recycling and look forward to more rethinking in April's Mayne Island Recycling Society's article in the MayneLiner. Announcement: More Items to be Accepted at the MI Recycling Depot.
Good news for those of us who are wanting to divert materials from the waste stream. Starting January 18, 2023, two things happen. First, you will no longer have to separate "stretchy" and "crinkly plastic" - it all goes into one container now. Secondly, more items can be recycled on Mayne Island. Recycle BC, which is responsible for recycling Printed Paper and Packaging (PPP), has expanded the scope of materials it accepts, most of which are similar to accepted containers but are purchased for household use, not as packaging (see recyclebc.ca/newitems/ for full list). These items include: 1) Items sorted with Containers: plastic and plastic-coated paper plates, bowls and cups (party items); plastic straws, stir sticks and utensils; aluminum foil, pie plates and baking trays; purchased plastic food containers (i.e. rigid zip lock fridge and freezer con-tainers); rigid plastic gift bags or boxes; thin gauge metal boxes (i.e. cookie tins); plastic pots and saucers; disposable plastic hangers; plastic tape dispenser and plastic dental floss containers. 2) Items sorted with Paper: single use party decorations; kraft or multilayered paper bags; paper food containers; paper gift bags and boxes; corrugated cardboard moving and storage boxes. 3) Items sorted with Flexible Plastic: plastic food storage, sandwich and freezer bags, and vacuum seal bags; plastic shrink wrap; flexible plastic gift bags and boxes; single use and multi-use curbside recycling bags; reusable plastic carry out bags; plastic drop sheets; plastic bubble wrap; squishy foam packaging (polyeth-ylene foam). 4) Items sorted with Foam Containers: foam plates, bowls and cups. You may notice that we have already been accepting some of these items. In our contract with Recycle BC, we are allowed 3% non-conforming material in what we deliver - including mis-sort-ed and non-acceptable items. Between the stellar sorting by Mayne Islanders and our eagle-eyed staff, we are always below that level, so in some instances we did not remove items we knew could be recycled if they reached the plant. Thanks to all of you who sort as much as you can at home. The more you sort at home, the shorter the lines are to get into the Depot. So Thanks. Re-visiting the B.Y.O.C. (Bring Your Own Containers) Project In 2019 the Mayne Island Recycling Society spearheaded an environmental project with the community called the B.Y.O.C Campaign. Twenty island families took up the challenge to greatly reduce the amount of single-use plastics and disposable containers used over a 60-day period. Items such as plastic bags, plastic beverage cups and lids, plastic straws, plastic take out containers, and plastic cutlery were targeted. It was a very successful experiment! It was estimated that 2,680 plastic containers were averted from landfill by this group of 20 households during the 2-month campaign. As well, overall awareness by the community of the need to reduce single-use plastic was achieved. Unfortunately we lost some ground when Covid restrictions came into effect. Not much we could do about that at the time. However, as many of these restrictions have now ended, perhaps now is a good time to re-visit the challenge and put renewed effort into cutting down on our consumption of single-use plastic. Some of the recommendations to avoid use of these throw-away plastics are fairly obvious — bring your own reusable grocery bags when shopping, use mesh or cloth bags for produce rather than plastic bags, and carry personal travel mugs for take-out coffee and beverages. Some further suggestions are: bring your own containers for take-out food and restaurant left overs where possible; refuse plastic straws, lids and cutlery; use food storage containers for leftovers at home rather than using cling wrap plastic; where possible resist buying merchandise with excess packaging; frequent the local farmstands for fresh produce where there are no plastic bags; and try re-usable cloth gift bags rather than disposable gift wrap. In situations where we haven’t been able to avoid single-use plastic, perhaps we could start a respectful dialogue to see if some alternate solutions can be found. A little discussion and some thinking outside the box can be the breakthrough. There are no doubt countless other ways to help us ‘kick the plastic habit’. Why not take up the challenge to see how many plastic containers you’re able to avoid each week! Let us know about any tricks you’ve learned on reducing the amount of packaging consumed, by sharing your experience with us on our Mayne Island Recycling Society Facebook page. - Lynda Smyth Dance!
The more observant recyclers will have noted the new dance craze that has overtaken the recycling depot, “The milk jug two-step”. It goes to the tune of the Stompin’ Tom Connors classic whose lyrics run: “You may think it’s goofy, but the man in the moon is a Newfie.” If you’re not a fan of Stompin’ Tom don’t worry, the milk jug two-step is adaptable. You can hum your own tune, lead with either foot, step lightly or with weight, though you should probably wear shoes. The goals are threefold, to have fun, get a little leg exercise, and to flatten the dairy and dairy substitute containers so that we can fit more per bag and earn a bigger return. For those who don’t dance, or have two left feet, don’t despair, just imagine that milk jug is the head of your worst—but let’s not go there. Instead, here’s more good news: it’s not only milk and milk substitutes, but the four and nine litre water jugs that need flattening. Forget the beer and pop cans, the small plastic water and juice bottles. They can be left as is. And do not, repeat do not, do the milk jug two-step on glass bottles, though by all means dance on those bag-in-a-box numbers. It all has to do with volume and return. Every drink container carries a ten-cent deposit, whether it’s a tiny juice carton the kids take for lunch, a gallon water jug, or a two-litre box of Burrard Inlet Low Tide Malbec. If you’re not as light on your feet as you once were then get a partner and turn the milk jug two-step into a waltz or romantic little slow dance. And it does not have to be a partner your own age. Remember that small children love to jump up and down, alone or in groups. It’s an excellent way for them to burn off that excess energy. Just be sure to remove the caps from the container, otherwise it’ll be like stomping a soccer ball and very hard on the knees. To save time, you should do the milk jug two-step at home. However, should the desire to dance overtake you while at the depot then go for it. A little light entertainment is always welcome in the workplace, though it’s probably best not to close your eyes after the fashion of a whirling dervish or indulge too many ballet leaps or Cossack kicks, for we wouldn’t want you to get run over by some anti-dance curmudgeon or someone desperate to escape all that aggravating joie de vivre. To encourage the milk jug two-step, we will be widening the departure lane and remind depot patrons to park as far to the right as possible to give the performers room to kick up their heels. So, all you hip hoppers, quick steppers, jitter buggers, cake walkers, can canners, twisters, fruggers, jivers, bunny hoppers, disco queens, fox trotters and funky chicken enthusiasts, let the spirit take you and dance. - Grant Buday On May 25 the Recycling Society held its AGM. 2021/22 was another successful year for the MIRS. We continued to fulfill our mandate to safely provide a comprehensive recycling service to the island. Our staff and volunteers worked hard to provide a friendly and well-organized experience for those visiting the Depot, and islanders continued to make good use of the facility, including supporting it through memberships.
This year is one of transition, with a number of long-standing Board members deciding to retire. We will greatly miss the contributions of Vicki Turay, Deb Foote, Lynda Smyth and John Shayler. We are excited to see a number of excellent new members elected to the Board, and we look forward to their contributions in the future: Sean Tucker, Michael Jones, Kathy Kaiser and Richard Jarco. The Depot continued to operate safely and efficiently through the year, with no incidents reported. We continue to upgrade our safety and housekeeping inspections under the guidance of Bill Warning and Grant Buday. Covid led to many changes in Depot Operations, but islanders have adapted well to the changes with only moderate grumbling (LOL). Our volunteers are an integral part of the society, although the role has changed somewhat due to Covid limitations. We are in the process of getting volunteers reengaged in actual recycling work. A volunteer survey indicated generally very positive feedback. Thanks to everyone who volunteers, and we are always looking for new people who would like to join the crew! In 2021/22 we put extra effort into our communications. We want to keep islanders informed in a timely manner on recycling developments, as well as helping to educate the community on the topic. We developed a new web site: www.maynerecycles.ca – check it out. We created out own Facebook page, and finally we engaged a Communications Coordinator to keep all these shiny new tools up to date and looking good. We have already seen a significant increase in traffic through these sites as a result. This year we decided to accept “non-packaging plastic” at the depot. There is no funding available for the costs of doing this, so we request a financial contribution from those who can afford to do so to offset these costs. The alternative would be to see the material end up in Hartland landfill, but through this program the material is recycled into useful products. We are anticipating heavy traffic at the depot this summer, and are implementing plans to minimize the lineups as much as possible. You can do your part by careful pre-sorting before coming to the depot, and trying to take no more than ten minutes max to complete the task. I would like to thank all the staff, volunteers, and depot users for their contributions to a successful year, and we look forward to continuing to serve the community and reduce our collective environmental footprint in 2022. - Don Eadie Recycling Depot is now accepting non-packaging plastics!
Spring is now in full swing, and perhaps you are engaging in the ancient ritual of Spring Cleaning or generally tidying up your house and yard. Possibly you have encountered items such as the kids plastic beach ball, or that broken Adirondack chair that Uncle Joe sat on a bit too heavily last summer? Perhaps you are wondering what to do with this inconvenient detritus of our consumer society? So, the big question is: Does the Mayne Island Recycling Depot accept such articles? And the answer is: no, and YES! To explain this conundrum, it is necessary to have a brief glance into the byzantine world of how recycling is funded in BC. As far as plastics is concerned, ONLY plastics used in packaging are funded for recycling under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs that are the key for all recycling in BC. Perhaps that will change in the future, but it is not on the horizon at the moment. So, in accepting non-packaging plastics at the Depot, the Recycling Society has to absorb the full cost of collecting, sorting, baling and transporting these items. However we do not want to see these items ending up in the landfill, as may often happen today. So, the Recycling Board has taken the decision that we will now accept non-packaging plastics (within reason and our ability to store the materials, at the Depot Managers discretion), BUT we respectfully request that these be accompanied by a financial donation. Your generosity will help us to cover the costs of this service. However no beach ball will be turned away due to financial inability to make such a donation! We are fortunate that we are able to send these non-packaging plastics to Merlin Plastics in Vancouver. Merlin have been a pioneer in plastics recycling for many years, and will ensure Uncle Joe’s Adirondack chair will be recycled into something useful, for example plastic decking. We hope that this initiative will help further reduce the island’s ecological footprint. The Fourth R
As every woke person knows, the three Rs of recycling: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, should include a fourth: Repair. Reduce, repair, reuse, recycle. Case in point. Recently the brakes on our forklift weakened. As it was long overdue for a check-up, I contacted a thirteen-star Victoria firm that promptly sent a specialist, a man renowned in his field. He examined the patient for about seven minutes and declared it terminal. It’s not just the brakes, he said, but the fact that it’s just too old. You should, he whispered, with a suitable show of professional gravitas, prepare for the worst. We stood there, heads bowed, and mourned. Then he brightened and said that his “people” had an excellent machine we could have for the low low price of ten thousand dollars, including shipping. I thanked him and said I would be in touch. When he was gone, I took the opportunity to have a last moment with the patient. What times we had known! What loads we had lifted! Surely this could not be it? Loyal, loving, unwilling to give up hope, I got a second opinion. This new specialist diagnosed low oil and brake fluid levels. He gave it a transfusion and tightened some screws. The patient was reborn. Admittedly, some things are not designed to be repaired, such as beer cans. Recently I went over a bumpy section of road on a certain small island and one of my newly purchased tall boys bounced up off the seat and hit the floor of the truck and got punctured. Envision a pinwheel shooting beer foam as you drive. I pulled over and threw myself onto the patient, pressing my thumb on the hole, a first responder compressing a carotid artery. One handed, I tried peeling off a length of duct tape to patch the hole. This proved challenging. I gnawed the edge of the tape with my teeth to no avail. There was only one recourse—drink the remainder of the beer. As I drove home, belching discretely, I thought how the truck’s beery bouquet was not altogether unpleasant. But what if a cop stopped me? This had in fact occurred only weeks before on the Pat Bay Highway. I was given a list of repairs to address. My shipping straps were old, my tires bald, there was inadequate signage, one of my reflectors was gone, and the truck just looked past its prime. “Maybe you should consider a new vehicle?” this guardian of the highway suggested. I thanked deeply him for his sage advice. Then got a second opinion. A little rust removal, some fresh paint, new straps, new tires. Voila! Now men gaze in envy while woman grow dewy eyed at the glory that is the recycling truck. But you ask, what has this to do with microwaves and toasters? How do I fix a 72 inch plasma screen TV? Duct tape? Three-quarter-inch putty? These items, you remind me, are designed to be discarded. Too true. And furthermore, you say, don’t be so ludicrously naive as to suggest that we fix the system. Ha! No, at this point you’ve no choice but to move on down the line to the final R: recycle. - Grant Buday |