REAPS REPORT

REAPS News

Web Pick Book of the Month REAPS’ Resources Recycle Toy Drive Renew Membership

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Local News UNBC Making Clean Water RDFFG Landfill Recycle Christmas Tree

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Around BC

UBC Ditches Single-Use Food ware Dragons Back Teens

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Around Canada

Ways to Reduce Plastic Waste Company Transforms Plastic Trash

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Around the World

Norway Recycles Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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Plastic Bottles Choking Planet 7

Back Page

Dumpy’s Tip of the Month Recycle Craft Corner Membership Application

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Hotline 250-561-7327 www.reaps.org Email newsletter@reaps.org

Recycl ing & Environmental Ac tion & Planning Society

COMING EVENTS

JANUARY

1 Happy New Year

4 - 5 Christmas Tree Chipping

26 Coldsnap 2020

28 Natural Resource Forum

28 Coldsnap

30 Coldsnap

FEBUARY

8 Ocean Flow

MARCH

APRIL

22 Earth Day

26 City Wide Spring Clean Up

MAY

2 REAPS Junk in the Trunk

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

JANUARY 2020

2020 needs to be the year when we turn our New Year's resolutions away from weight-loss, decluttering and career achievements and focus them firmly to-

wards doing everything we can for the planet.

Five years into the adoption of the Paris Agreement, 2020 will mark the year where we assess our collec-tive progress on our greatest global challenges at the international political scale. The year is also ripe for political movement, as more than 65 countries will be

hosting major elections this year.

2020 will also mark 50 years of Earth Day. The 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 will bring Earth Day back to its roots to mobilize millions to act for our

planet.

It is no longer acceptable to wait for the authorities to make legislative changes or for supermarkets to stop selling goods in plastic packaging – we must start as we mean to go on, accept personal responsibility and make positive changes that inspire both ourselves

and others to live more sustainably.

Here are 7 eco resolutions we should all adopt in

2020.

1. Recycle (But Do It Better) We know, recycling is not a silver bullet solution to our problems. But if you are going to recycle, do it right. Otherwise, you may end up doing more harm than good. Rinse—you are doing the dishes any-ways. REAPS has a list of over 75 items that can be

recycled posted on our website.

2. Compost, Compost, Compost Food waste greatly contributes to climate change. Think about it — when you toss food in the trash, you’re wasting all the resources that it took to grow, harvest and ship that food. Food sits in the landfill, producing methane, powerful greenhouse gas. Need

help to start? REAPS is here to assist.

3. Skip the Gym. Skip the Car

You look great just as you are. But if you’re insistent on toning up, skip the gym membership (it’s kind of a

New Year’s cliché, isn’t it?) by skipping the car.

We know this doesn’t work for everyone, but where and when you can, skip the car and walk, bike or take public transportation instead. You’ll get some good (free!) exercise, while taking a huge bite out of your personal carbon footprint. For every 1.6 km you don’t drive, you reduce your carbon footprint by 1/2 a kg. Bonus points if you’re lugging bags of groceries home

on your walk.

4. Read More Books Activation requires information. If reading more in on your resolution list why not add some climate and

environmental books to the rotation?

5. Eat less meat Animal agriculture has an enormous impact on cli-mate change, contributing as much greenhouse gas-es as every car, plane, train, and ship on Earth. Go-ing plant-based is one of the most powerful ways to reduce our personal carbon footprints (or foodprint, as we call it). Not ready to go all the way? Just start with

one meal, or go plant-based for breakfast and lunch.

6. Encourage others It's time to rally the troops and get friends and family on board with eco-living, too. Don't be afraid to air your new lifestyle swaps, plastic-free switches or a new refill station you've found. Be brave, in a friendly way, when you see people you know buying bottled water unnecessarily or asking for a plastic bag in the supermarket when you know you could easily carry

the shopping yourselves.

7. Start clothes swapping With the global textile industry emitting a staggering 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, fast fashion needs to become unfashionable, quickly. Host a swap to enjoy new items without the financial

or environmental price tag.

PAGE 2 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561-7327

REAPS NEWS Web Pick of the Month Book of the Month

www.psfk.com PSFK considers emerging sustainable retail practices within the circular economy, tracing the new ways companies from fashion to food are designing sustainability into their business model from the get-go.

“We Are the Weather” by Jonathan Safran Foer

ISBN 10: 0374280002

Re-evaluated his meat-based diet--and his conscience--in his powerful memoir and investigative report, Eating Animals. Now, he offers a mind-bending and potentially world-changing call to action on climate change. We Are the Weather is different--accessible, immediate, and with a single clear solution that indi-

vidual readers can put into practice straight away.

Did you know that we provide information on where, how, what and repairing of everyday items? Need to find where to repair a toaster? How to compost? Where to take old glasses? All this and more may be found on our website or for your own PDF version

email recycle@reaps.org for your copy today.

REAPS’ Resources

Renew / Become A Member Today

REAPS has been an effective environmental organiza-tion in the Prince George area for thirty (30) years. The few dollars that your membership costs can make a much bigger difference than you realize. REAPS, and the environmental sustainability of our community, will benefit from any contribution and level of involvement -- whether you become an active volunteer, attend our outreach events, or just read the newsletter. But above all, your membership is a genuine vote of confi-dence. Complete form on back page or pay member-

ship online through paypal at www.reaps.org

We are a charitable organization that provides receipts for donations received $20 or more. Take advantage

for tax deductions while supporting our society.

Please show your support and renew your member-ship for 2020 www.reaps.org

Recycle Toy Drive

Saturday, November 16, 2019 the residents of Prince George donated 152 boxes of quality used toys, baby items, books and games for 15

local child advocacy groups.

A big thank you to the volunteers (Maryanne, Rina, Keilaam, Christine, Harpryia, and Adele) who assisted with the receiving, sorting, boxing and labeling

of the toys.

These toys filled a 10 foot Uhaul truck and were delivered on the Monday to the happy faces of the commu-

nity organizations.

PAGE 3 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561-7327

LOCAL NEWS

RDFFG Foothills Blvd Landfill - Harnesses The Power of House-hold Waste source: Canadian Biomass

The Foothills Blvd. Landfill is finding new ways to harness the power of trash. Around 73,000 tonnes of household and construction waste is received in a year at the landfill. The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George owns and operates the Foothills Boule-vard Regional Landfill and is partnering with provin-cial utility FortisBC to produce Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) – a purified biomethane – for the prov-ince’s gas grid. The project will have the capacity to produce up to 100,000 gigajoules of RNG annually, enough to heat up to 1,100 homes on 100 per

cent RNG.

Petra Wildauer, General Manager of environmental services for the Foothills Boulevard Regional Landfill; stated that the landfill has been collecting biogas since 2002 when the system was installed voluntarily in order to reduce the environmental impact and support the long-term goal of attracting beneficial

use alternatives.

16 vertical wells are staggered throughout an area of the landfill that is no longer active collecting biogas. The landfill gas is created from the decom-posing waste. The gas is approximately half carbon dioxide and half me-thane. The rate of collection from each well in monitored and adjusted con-tinuously to ensure the best quantity and quality produced. The landfill has

reached the threshold for utilization at 250 cubic feet per minute.

This site would be FortisBC most northern Renewable Natural Gas (RNG)

location.

READ FULL ARTICLE

The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George has received elector approval in August of last year to enter into a 20-year agreement to have FortisBC pur-chase raw landfill gas from the Foothills Boulevard Regional Landfill to purify and inject it into the natural gas distribution system as Renewable Natural

Gas (RNG).

As part of the agreement, FortisBC will finance, construct and operate the plant required to process the raw landfill gas for injection into their system. The RDFFG will continue its role in being responsible for upgrades and maintenance to the landfill gas collection system to ensure it will meet its obligations for quantity and quality of gas to be supplied through the agree-ment. The RDFFG is slated to receive between $75,000-$145,000 annually

from FortisBC for the supply of landfill gas.

Now that elector approval has been given, the RDFFG and FortisBC willfinal-ize the agreement subject to approval by the British Columbia Utilities Com-

mission (BCUC).

A UNBC Graduate has modified a specific type of mineral

that when put in bacteria-filled water manages to kill it.

Lon Kerr is modifying natural zeolites. Zeolites are mi-croporous, aluminosilicate minerals commonly used as commercial adsorbents and catalysts. The Zeolites Kerr is using in attempt at creating drinkable water are taken from the International Zeolite’s Bromley Creek Quarry near

Princeton, BC.

To have the zeolites function as a water purifier there’s a bit of a process. The zeolites are washed with deionized water and treated with a sodium-chloride solution which removes any water-soluble impurities, making a sodium-form zeolite. Once purified, the sample is soaked in a zinc

solution.

Tests have shown that zinc-modified zeolite is in fact capa-ble of killing 100 percent of bacteria. In just under an hour of exposure 0.1 g of the product can reduce the cell count of bacteria-filled water by over two-thousand per hundred

milliliters.

UNBC Grad Student Mak-ing Bacteria-filled Water Clean source: CKPG

PAGE 4 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561 -7327

AROUND BC

UBC Ditches Single-use Food Ware source: Solid Waste & Recycling

UBC Vancouver is ditching single-use coffee cups and plastic food ware, and encouraging students, faculty and staff to choose reusable options such as their own mugs, water bottles

and cutlery instead.

The move is part of UBC’s Zero Waste Food Ware Strategy – adopted in June 2019 – aimed at keeping as many single-use coffee cups, plastic straws, bags and cutlery out of landfills and the environment as possible. Straws will still be available upon request for

accessibility purposes.

“Single-use plastic is a global problem that every community is tackling differently,” says Bud Fraser, planning and sustainability engi-

neer at UBC.

“As a long-standing leader in global sustaina-bility, UBC has an opportunity to lead the re-gion in reducing single-use items and to make an impact far beyond our community. This is an important step toward a zero waste future

for food and beverage on campus.”

Starting in January, all food and beverage retailers on campus will be required to charge customers a separate fee for single-use items – initially coffee cups – to encourage the tran-

sition to reusable food ware. To avoid paying the fee, consumers can bring their own travel mug or choose to enjoy their drink in the store

using a reusable mug.

Retailers – not UBC – will determine the sin-gle-use cup fee, which must be at least 25 cents, and will collect the fees. Retailers will determine how to use the fees, which may include applying them to offset the extra cost

associated with transitioning to different prod-

ucts.

Retailers will also move toward offering smart-er, more sustainable materials for single-use items, such as wooden cutlery that will be available upon request, and will discontinue certain items, such as foam cups and plastic bags. Customers are encouraged to bring their

own cutlery. Improved in-store recycling bins

and signage are also part of the strategy.

In 2017, 1.7 million single-use coffee cups, 2.3 million pieces of plastic cutlery and 690,000 plastic bags were given out on the UBC Van-couver campus alone. Many single-use items are often not disposed of in the correct recy-cling or composting bins because they are challenging to sort, which creates problems at composting facilities and degrades the quality

and value of materials for recycling.

“Our largest food retailer, UBC Food Services, has already successfully implemented some of these changes, and the new strategy offers a unique opportunity to further reduce waste by extending these successful requirements to the wide range of retailers across campus,” says Victoria Wakefield, purchasing manager at UBC Student Housing and Hospitality Ser-

vices.

“With an aligned strategy that details how food is packaged and served, all UBC food and beverage retailers are able to participate and help elevate our zero waste activities to the level our students and the wider community

are demanding.”

TO READ Zero Waste Strategy

Dragons Back Teens’ Recycling Venture source: The Daily Courier

Some students from Rutland Secondary School in Kelowna now have CBC-TV Dragons’ Den money to take their plastics recycling enterprise

up a notch.

Operation Take Two received $30,000 in Dragon money for a 25% stake in the social-enterprise business and a matching $30,000 donation from

GoodSpark Desjardins, a show sponsor.

Operation Take Two takes discarded plastics and remakes them into all kinds of useful and

decorative products.

The project started two years ago when the school’s Interact Club came up with an idea to recycle and repurpose the one ton of plastic

garbage the high school generates annually.

A core group of about 10 students brought the

$43,000 Operation Take Two initiative to fruition by securing grants, donations and donations-in-

kind.

Kelowna-based BigSteelBox supplied a contain-er that became their recycling centre. Recycling bins for plastics are placed in every classroom in the high school. Once a week, they are collected and brought to the container in the courtyard, where the materials are sorted into seven plastic categories. All plastics are cleaned, dried and

put through a shredder to produce plastic flakes.

“These flakes are the raw material for so many new products,” Keneisha Charles explained when The Okanagan Weekend visited the opera-

tion in June. “We melt them in the oven.”

The plastics become fanny packs, plant pots, decorative tiles, chess pieces, industrial parts

and much more, which the students plan to sell.

Charles, who was one of four students appearing on the TV show along with Ashley Ciardullo, Theresa Schwab and Aaliyah Charles, is now

attending university in Ontario.

The Dragons’ Den appearance was taped months ago, but the results couldn’t be revealed

until the show aired.

The two Dragons with Okanagan ties, Lane Mer-rifield and Jim Treliving, agreed to invest $15,000 each after the students dumped plastics on the studio floor, and explained how their busi-ness works and how they turn plastics like cups,

straws and containers into the new products.

“Our plan for the investment is to get more equipment for our workspace and multiply our impacts by using our profits to help youth in oth-er communities start their own Take Two work-spaces,” said Ciardullo, a Grade 12 student, in a

news release after the show aired.

PAGE 5 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561 -7327

AROUND CANADA

Inter Pipeline Ltd. (“Inter Pipeline”) and The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (“NAIT”) announced a new partnership to re-search opportunities to reuse and recycle plas-tic in Canada. The ten-year agreement, known as Plastics Research in Action (“PRIA”), will be funded by a $10 million commitment from Inter Pipeline, which represents the largest applied

research partnership in NAIT’s history.

PRIA will draw on NAIT’s applied research expertise in the area of process engineering, process automation and environmental sus-tainability. Student researchers will also be

involved. “Our partnership with industry is fundamental to who we are as a polytechnic. This agree-ment showcases how NAIT plays a vital role in helping industry to find solutions to the prob-lems they are facing. We are proud of our part-nership with Inter Pipeline,” said Dr. Glenn Feltham, President and Chief Executive Of-

ficer, NAIT.

“I’m confident that the researchers at NAIT will

find new opportunities to help keep plastics out of our environment and extend their useful life” said Christian Bayle, President and Chief Ex-ecutive Officer of Inter Pipeline. “Today in Canada, nearly 80 per cent of all post-consumer plastics end up in landfills. Inter Pipeline believes that innovative thinking is critical to addressing this complex societal issue and is very pleased to do its part through

this long-term funding commitment.”

Potential research projects include examining opportunities for plastic to be reused, thus retaining the value of the product, and support-ing the ideals of a circular economy. Innova-tions could potentially help Canadians reuse and remanufacture materials, create new eco-nomic opportunities and benefit our environ-ment. A portion of the applied research fund-ing will also be dedicated to improving sustain-able practices at Inter Pipeline’s Heartland

Petrochemical Complex.

Heartland Complex is being built to compete in a global marketplace. The polypropylene man-ufacturing process at Inter Pipeline’s complex

is esti-mated to generate 65% less green-house gas (“GHG”) than the global average, and 35% less GHG than the

North American average.

Inter Pipeline was a recipient of a federal in-vestment made through the Strategic Innova-tion Fund, a program designed to attract and support high-quality business investments in Canada’s most dynamic and innovative sectors. This commitment has allowed Inter Pipeline to invest in the skills of the future by increasing its number of co-op positions for post-secondary students, invest in increased opportunities for women in trades and contin-ue investing in research and development,

including efforts to reduce plastic waste.

Inter Pipeline and NAIT Researching Ways to Reduce Plastic Waste source: Alberta Chamber of Resources

Company Transforms Plastic Trash into Innovative Items source: CBC

A Manitoba business is turning unwanted used plastic into usable items, such as benches,

planters and construction blocks.

"We can nail to it, we cut it, we can sand it, we can glue it, we can miter it," Michelle Gowdar, chief operating officer of ReGen Composites, said about the product they create. "But this

material is as strong as cement."

Many people diligently put plastics in their blue bins, but there are still many items that are not accepted for recycling that contain plastic, such as coffee cups, bags, laptop shells and carpet pieces. For ReGen Composites, those items

are all valuable raw materials.

The Winnipeg company has found a way to use unwanted plastic and wood to create new products. That raw material gets broken up into tiny pieces that go into a hopper and come out as a big solid block that can be used like

wood.

The blocks are a greyish colour, and if you look closely, you can see the colourful plastic bits

throughout.

"We cut off all the outsides, so we get this real-ly smooth, really nice block, and that block then becomes that foundation for making something new. We use all the same-sized blocks as the building foundation for making a bench, a table, a planter," Gowdar said. "It almost looks like an aggregate stone, or an aggregate stone and

cement mix."

While the company can use any type of plastic, its focus is on things that can't traditionally be recycled. That way, more garbage is kept out of landfills. They don't accept raw materials from individuals. ReGen gets its garbage from businesses, but right now the company

already has a stockpile of raw material.

They also work in schools with Bag Up Manito-ba, a program of Multi-Material Stewardship

Manitoba and Take Pride Winnipeg.

Students collect plastic bags that are turned

into a bench for them to sit on at school.

The company got its start 20 years ago with research and development; they got going on

production three years ago.

PAGE 6 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250-561 -7327

AROUND THE WORLD

The Infinitum bottle deposit hub recycles 97 per cent of Norway’s plastic drinks bottles, almost all to such a high standard that they can be turned back into bottles. Should the world follow suit to help tackle the menace of plastic pollution?

A six-metre-long whale washed up on the shores of the Norwegian island of Sotra in 2017. Emaciated and in terrible health, zool-ogists decided it had to be put down. They found 30 plastic objects in the stomach of this Cuvier’s beaked whale, including sweet wrappers and plastic bread bags, with labels

written in Danish and English.

Plastic waste kills more than 100,000 sea mammals and a million birds each year glob-ally. It is little surprise because, according to the UN Environment Programme, the world currently produces 480bn new plastic bottles annually. It all has to go somewhere, and the equivalent of a lorry load is dumped into the

sea every minute.

To explore a potential solution, look at a warehouse on the outskirts of Oslo. It’s home

to an organization called Infinitum, which runs Norway’s collection scheme for plastic bottles and cans. The topic might not carry the pizzazz of rocket science or the wonder of deep sea exploration, but Infinitum means that a startling 97 per cent of all plastic drinks bottles in Norway are recycled – and 92 per cent of these to such a high standard that they are used to make more bottles. Some bottles have been recycled more than 50 times already.

This is because the system is strictly con-trolled: glue, cap and even label materials are checked and a small amount of virgin material is added. As its name suggests, the team at Infinitum wants to create a never-

ending loop of plastic reuse.

“We are the world’s most efficient system,” says Sten Nerland, director of logistics and operations. “As an environmental company you might think we should try to avoid plas-tic, but if you treat it efficiently and recycle it, plastic is one of the best products to use: light, malleable and it’s cheap.” Compare the country’s plastic bottle recy-cling rate of more than 97 per cent with 43 per cent in the UK and 28 per cent in the US, and it’s clear how much there is to be learned. International politicians and busi-nesses alike have taken note of what’s hap-pening at Infinitum. READ FULL ARTICLE

Norway Recycles 97% of its Plastic Bottles source: Positive. News

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Even Trashier Than Thought source: Popular Science

The world's largest collection of ocean debris is also the most famous, but its name, the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," is a misno-

mer.

For starters, it's not one giant patch.

"It's not a mass. It's nothing you can see from space, all these things one's heard," 60 Minutes producer Michael Gavshon stated "But in fact, it's just a giant soup, a gyre. It's a whirlpool of tiny fragments of plastic in the

ocean at various depths."

In a new paper in Scientific Reports, re-searchers found that the infamous great Pa-cific garbage patch contains 16 times more plastic than previous estimates showed, and

it seems to be increasing over time.

The great Pacific garbage patch is one of six areas of the ocean known to accumu-

late plastic, located in the north Pacific Ocean. While there is a lot of plastic there, the debris aren't clumped together like some floating landfill. Instead, the plastics (many of them broken down into teeny tiny pieces) are distributed widely across an area of about

617,000 square miles.

By weight, the larger plastics (two inches or more) make up most of that total. Microplas-tics were vastly more numerous—but being tiny, didn’t contribute nearly as much to the weight. Nearly half the garbage came in the

form of fishing nets.

Researchers from the Ocean Cleanup, found that the sheer mass of plastic in the oceans has gone up over time, from 0.88 pounds per 0.39 square miles in the 1970s to 2.7 pounds per 0.39 square miles in 2015. That mirrors the increase in plastic production over the past sever-

al decades, as the material has become in-creasingly ubiquitous. But there are several other factors to consider. One is the 2011 tsunami off the coast of Japan, which swept vast amounts of debris out to sea. The other is that previous studies primarily fo-cused on small microplastics, not the larger 'megaplastics'—so we don't have a full un-derstanding of how that part of the problem has changed in recent decades. But Lebre-ton and colleagues did find that microplas-tics, which have been examined for years,

have increased in concentration.

PAGE 7 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561 -7327

We Know Plastic Bottles Are Choking Our Planet. So Why Are

Companies Still Selling Them? Source: CBC

More than 1 million plastic bottles are bought around the world per minute, 2017 report

says.

The American Beverage Association an-nounced on Tuesday that the world's leading beverage companies — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper — are investing $100 million to reduce the use of new plastic and improve plastic bottle recycling across the

globe.

Plastic packaging is scattered in every cor-ner of our planet. It's been found in the Arctic and the deepest parts of the Pacific

Ocean, the Mariana Trench.

And while Canada is looking to ban some single-use plastics, such as bags, straws and cutlery, one of the most signifi-cant contributors to the problem re-

mains beverage bottles.

A 2017 report by the U.K. newspaper the Guardian found that more than a million plas-tic bottles are purchased around the

world per minute.

In October 2019, a global brand audit by Break Free From Plastic named Coca-Cola

the world's top plastic polluter.

So, given what we know about the prob-lem, the real question is: Why do beverage

companies still sell plastic bottles?

Our love affair with the plastic bottle started

in the 1970s.

As early as 1929, there were glass bottle deposit programs in communities across the U.S. Once you returned your bottle, you re-ceived money back. It was considered an

incentive to reuse.

But in the 1960s, DuPont engineer Nathaniel Wyeth wondered why the soft drink industry wasn't using plastic for its drinks. He was told that carbonated beverages would cause

plastic to explode.

The story goes that he bought a plastic bottle of detergent, cleaned it out and poured in ginger ale. He left it in the fridge overnight. By morning, the container had swelled con-

siderably.

Following his experiment, he became deter-

mined to create a stronger type of plastic.

After years of trial and error, he developed polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which he

patented in 1973.

The soft drink industry loved it. It weighed less than glass, so it was cheaper to ship,

and it didn't run the risk of breaking.

But there were opponents to PET.

In 1969, Coca-Cola commissioned a life-cycle analysis comparing it to glass. The study ran the gamut, looking at water pollu-tion, emissions, energy expenditure and

more.

The investigators later reproduced it for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1974. Their conclusion was that no throwa-way container would match or sur-pass the 10-trip returnable glass bottle "in

the near future."

Coca-Cola went ahead with the new plastic

bottles, anyway. The rest is history.

The future For now, the largest beverage company in the world is trying to reduce its packaging in

a few ways.

In Latin America, for example, Coca-Cola Brazil invested roughly $425 million US in a returnable plastic bottle program. The con-sumer pays an indirect deposit (a fee built into the price) when buying the drink and then gets a discount on their next purchase when the bottle is returned. The bottles are

then cleaned and reused.

The company says it's seen a 90 per cent

return rate.

Oct. 23/19, Coca-Cola also announced its new "packageless" drink technology in Canada. Customers can buy a reusable cup that has a radio-frequency identification (RFID) and is synced to the compa-ny's Freestyle ma-chines. The machines, which are already found in some movie theatres and restau-rants across the coun-try, allow a customer to pour a drink into the bottle and charge it to

their account.

Unilver, PepsiCo and Mars, Incorpo-rated have also an-nounced their own initiatives to reduce

their use of new plastic.

And it's all because they're listening to con-

sumers, experts say.

"It is becoming a major threat to their busi-ness, not doing anything about

this," Wingstrand said.

But Elmore believes more needs to be done about plastic waste across every level, from

businesses to governments to consumers.

Consumers, in particular, need to loudly ex-press their disapproval of the current system,

he said.

"We constructed it and we can dismantle it."

PAGE 8 REAPS REPORT HOTLINE 250 -561 -7327

Recycling and Environmental Action

Planning Society (AKA REAPS)

The REAPS Report is published six times a year, on the first of

January, March, May, July, September, and November.

Articles, originals or reprinted with permission, are submitted by members and represent the opinions of the authors only, not nec-

essarily those of the Society, Board, or members as a whole.

Deadline for submission is two weeks prior to publication date. Articles, suggestions for articles, or comments in general are much appreciated, and can be submitted to the REAPS office via email at newsletter@reaps.org

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletters

via email please email REAPS and state UNSUB-

SCRIBE in the subject line.

Mailing address: PO Box 444, Prince George, BC V2L 4S6 Compost Garden and Office Location: 1950 Gorse Street

RECYCLI NG & ENVI RONM ENTAL ACTION & PLANNING SOCI ETY

Phone: 250-561-7327 Fax: 250-561-7324 E-mail: newsletter@reaps.org Website: www.reaps.org Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/REAPSPG

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RECYCLE CRAFT CORNER

Dumpy’s Tip of the Month

Cook your own meals: We all know more often than not it’s easier to eat out rather than pre-pare something that morning or the evening before. However, eating out can be expensive and extremely wasteful. Why not give those takeouts a miss this Janu-ary and start cooking more at home. By preparing your own meals you save money and also reduce waste from packaging. Cooking at home also provides a great opportunity to reduce

your carbon footprint.

Easy Biodegradable Bird Feeders

Don't spend a lot of money on a fancy bird feeder that only lasts a couple of years before it needs to be added to a land-fill.

Attract birds to your garden with one of these fun and easy eco-friendly bird feeders. They are great craft projects to make with children, while teaching them the importance of taking care of the environment.

Each feeder is made entirely out of biodegradable materials, so even if it gets carried away by a pesky critter you know that it won't hurt the environment.

1/ 1/2 orange - scoop out (eat) make 3 holes, attach string, fill with seeds and hang.

2/ smear crunchy peanut butter or suet on tree trunks

3/ smear a pine cone or toilet paper roll with peanut butter / suet and roll in bird seed and hang in tree