The other day I noticed a bunch of Canadian geese down at the Fraser River Styrofoam patch. Why, I wondered, would they prefer to toddle here rather than fly south for the winter? More importantly, I wondered why was no one cleaning this mess up. I decided to take a half hour out of my day and putting it toward my own personal community initiative. I was going to pick up garbage and report my findings.

When I was young and living in Alberta in the 1980’s, I belonged to the Dairy 4-H Club. One of our big projects every year was Highway Clean-up. We picked up garbage on the side of the Highway for probably about 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon. It was amazing to see the amount of garbage that littered the side of the road. Fast forward to 2011. Have we as humans learned our lesson about littering? It seems that we as a collective whole have not. That is why The Vancouver Aquarium partnered with TD Canada Trust and started the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up, happening this weekend in New Westminster and beyond.

The issue of garbage and recycling rates in multi-family dwellings is finally being addressed by Metro Vancouver.
The region’s Zero Waste targets are for 70% trash diversion by 2015. Single family homes are well on their way with 55% diversion, but multi-family lags far behind with an estimated 16% diversion. So why such a disparity from multi-family to single-family?

Green Drinks is a monthly meeting of people interested in sustainability and the environment, and is usually free of themes or agendas. This week, however, there’s a special focus on Metro Vancouver’s ‘Zero Waste Challenge.’

I promised an update on automated waste collection, and it is (almost) all good news! Council passed a motion on Monday that represents an improvement (from an environmental sustainability and solid-waste-diversion perspective) over the recommendation from staff presented to the Environmental Advisory Committee last week.

There is a lot happening on the trash front right now. The New Westminster Environmental Partners have been talking a lot of trash this year, as solid waste and it’s reduction, is one of our key initiatives for 2010. Trash is timely right now, with all the recent talk of Cache Creek Landfill limits, waste-to-energy plants, and Metro Vancouver’s Zero Waste Challenge.

With nearly 3.5 million metric tonnes of garbage being produced in Metro Vancouver every year, waste management is one of the largest environmental concerns facing the Lower Mainland and a political hot potato that many politicians would rather transfer to a neighbouring municipality (or nation) than face head on.

New automated garbage collection trucks will be rolling down city streets in spring 2010. The City of New Westminster has ordered three new automated collection vehicles, following council’s approval of a plan to switch to state-of-the-art automated collection throughout the City. The expected delivery date for the new trucks is March 2010. The vehicles will be used to collect both garbage and Clean Green materials.

If you’ve tried to put out a bag of weeds and leaves on garbage day lately, you’ll have discovered that yard waste collection has ceased for the year here in New West.
If your leaves are piling up, you’re in luck this week: the city will be collecting them for one week only this month , between Nov. 17-21. (and again for a week in December, from the 15th to19th). The city says to use labeled garbage cans or biodegradable paper bags (gold stars for you!).
Thou shalt not use plastic bags, lest …