Vancouver’s Garbage Strike Has a Green Lining
by Trey Granger
Published on July 30th, 2007
1 Comment
In this GlobeLife article, residents of the city of Vancouver have responded to last week’s garbage strike by investing in composters to find a more environmentally-friendly way of disposing of garbage. One resident estimates that her family has reduced its garbage output by 75% since purchasing a composter.
“Out of enlightened self-interest, city officials are encouraging residents to step up their recycling efforts and consider composting, and they seem to be heeding the call. A survey of Canadian Tire, Rona and Home Depot stores in Vancouver this week found that most were sold out of composters, while a few had just one left in stock.”
Vancouver (and all of Canada) is part of Earth 911’s recycling database, so residents looking to recycle should type in their zip-code to the search bar at the top of this page. For more resources on composting, visit our Composting page.
ianrecycle
posted on August 1st, 2007 at 1:04 am
They could go one step further and make their recycle bins out of recycled material.
For hot composting you must have at least a cube of one yard to get it to heat up and kill weed seeds and bacteria. So any contraption that will hold this volume conveniently will do. You can use recycled straw bales, recycled builders wooden palletes, or anything else that will retain the right shape.
For cold composting you can use a recycled 44 gallon oil drum with the top cut out, and a six-inch hole in the bottom. Support the drum on recycled bricks so that you can slide a recycled ice-cream container under the hole to collect what drops out.
Cover the hole with a wire grill such as the tray from a recycled oven and start adding food scraps. When the scraps are about 6 inches deep, add worms. You can buy manure worms, or look under piles of dead leaves. This is better for small quantities, and you rely on the earthworms to do the work for you.