Environmental Friendliness Isn't As Hard As You Think!

I was thinking about whether we could consider ourselves green in our family after Natalie posted about Ottawa's Green Bin program.  It turns out that our habits are actually pretty good.  We actually do most of these things without even thinking about the impact on the environment, and none of them are inconvenient at all.  Perhaps there are some new ideas for you to try now or in the future!

Green things we do:

• use reusable shopping bags and bins
• refill sports water bottles instead of buying bottled water
• drive very fuel-efficient cars, one of which is diesel (we don't have public transit in our rural town)
• carpool to work (sometimes I drive with my husband to his job and then bus to Carleton)
• line dry laundry outside (don't do this when it's snowy, but probably could)
• cloth diaper our baby and use cloth wipes (it's actually way cheaper and easier than you'd think!)
• breastfeed our baby (lets us avoid unnecessary packaging for formula)
• buy used baby clothing (we'd do this even more if we didn't receive so many clothes as gifts)
• fewer toilet flushes (sounds gross, I know, but it doesn't really need it every time!)
• cook and eat whole foods (less packaging!)
• grow veggies and herbs in the summer
• buy locally from our farmer's market and butcher
• compost in our backyard and use the result in our gardens (instead of the green bin)
• keep our house cool in winter (18 during the day, 15 at night), and air condition only our bedroom and only on the hottest days
• buy the best quality we can afford so we aren't throwing things out all the time

 What else do you do?

What happens after the Green Bin

If you're like me, you were very excited when the City of Ottawa introduced the Green Bin Program a couple of years back. I study Environmental Engineering here at Carleton and am a self-proclaimed nut about composting! I think it's a great way to reduce the load going to landfills, which are expensive to make and it is becoming more difficult to build new ones. Plus, the final product of composting, compost, can be beneficial to farmlands and gardens. It's a win-win!

Recently, I was a part of a group who was invited to visit the facilities where material from the Green Bin is processed into compost. It is really great to get to see a process that you learn about outside of class in a real life!

When material from the Green Bin arrives, it is shredded to decrease size of some of the larger particles. Then material is piled and basically moved around in different piles under different conditions to help degrade the material.

For organics, such as kitchen waste, paper products, tissue and other items, to decompose it needs the right amount of water and air. When these elements are controlled, or engineered, the composting process is optimized to take less time. It really is a thing of beauty.

The final product is a light and fluffy material that has a nice earthy smell. Any plastic, metal, rocks or other more difficult to degrade items have all been removed in the process and the compost can be readily applied to farmland and gardens to provide necessary nutrients. We had a great visit and I hope that you've learnt a little bit about where your organics from the Green Bin go... and more importantly, I hope you like using your Green Bin as much as I do!