City residents should look at their coffee cups if they want to help St. Albert reduce waste, says the head of the province’s recycling council.
October 20 to 26 is Waste Reduction Week in Canada.
Christina Seidel of the Recycling Council of Alberta hopes residents will take part by participating in the council’s campaign against disposable coffee cups.
Canadians toss about 1.6 billion disposable coffee cups a year, and every time they do so, they throw out all the energy and resources that went into those cups, Seidel says.
“It’s a waste of resources.”
Most coffee cups are coated in plastic and are very difficult to recycle, Seidel says. Even if they are recyclable, it’s always more efficient to use a re-usable mug instead.
The council is calling on residents to do a simple audit of their local coffee shops to highlight best and worst practices when it comes to cups.
The audit involves going to a coffee shop in Alberta and ordering a coffee, the campaign’s Facebook page explains. Residents should record whether they are asked if their order is to stay or to go, and if they were offered a re-useable mug by default for a to-stay order. Audit results are then posted on the campaign’s Facebook page.
The best servers should always check if your drink is to stay or to go and always use a re-useable cup for “to stay” drinks, Seidel says.
“Some of the small niche coffee shops are definitely the best performers, and some of the big chains definitely have a long ways to go,” Seidel said.
An Aug. 22 audit of the south-side Starbucks in St. Albert on the campaign’s Facebook page gave the store a “tentative thumbs up” in that it allowed for the use of travel mugs but had no recycling station for disposable cups. The server also offered a reusable mug when the customer said the order was to stay.
St. Albert does an amazing job when it comes to recycling and composting, says city solid waste programs co-ordinator Christian Benson. But while its diversion rates have increased over the last few years, its actual waste generation rate hasn’t changed much at all.
“Now it’s at the point where we have to look at reducing our overall waste generation.”
Re-useable shopping bags and coffee cups are two ways to do that, Benson says.
Visit www.wrwcanada.com for more waste-reduction tips.
City residents can learn about how simple it is to go solar next week at a free talk in Edmonton.
Warren Sarauer is giving a free talk on how to generate and sell solar power next Oct. 22 on behalf of the Solar Energy Society of Alberta.
Sarauer is the group’s past-president and owner of Edmonton’s Evergreen and Gold Renewable Energy, which specializes in grid-tied solar systems.
Hooking into the grid today is much, much simpler than it was five years ago, Sarauer says.
“It’s a one-page application,” he notes, and most competent installers will complete it for you.
You’ll need equipment certified by the Canadian Standards Association and a thumbs-up from your local electrical inspector that your system is up to code, he continues. Once that happens, you can send the application into your electricity provider, who will give you a bidirectional meter to measure power going into and out of your house.
Your new electricity bill will show the amount of power you used minus what you generated.
“At the end of the year, hopefully those two would even out so you have a minimal electrical bill,” Sarauer says.
A solar system will cost you $10,000 to $25,000, Sarauer adds – about 40 per cent less than it would have cost four years ago. Solar panels not only protect you against future jumps in utility rates, but they also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“It gives you that warm, positive feeling that you’re actually doing something.”
The talk starts at 7 p.m. in MacEwan University’s CN Theatre (Room 5-142). Visit solaralberta.ca for details.
