Sand Art by Jim Denevan

Can’t believe that this is the last friday of July. The daffodils are already pushing their green tips through the hard, frosted ground. Big frost here today. The days are getting noticebly longer with more light in the mornings and evenings. Soon we will be able to spend more time outside breathing in the fresh Canterbury air (and planting the vegetables to reduce our packaging waste!).

Had a lovely drive to Rangiora yesterday to visit Enterprise North Canterbury and then took an inland road to Amberley to visit Hurunui District Council. Today we are off to Ashburton District Council and then we will have met nearly everyone who looks after solid waste for the individual districts. Kaikoura, MacKenzie and Selwyn to go. It is great to get out of the office and remind ourselves of all of the businesses, individuals and other organisations doing good green work (or who might need financial assistance from SIFT) in the region.

Here are this week’s great finds that you might find interesting:

• Live in or near Nelson – or feel like a trip to the sunniest spot in New Zealand? Visit the 2010 EcoFest Nelson.
• Illegal dumping of waste seems to be on the rise but needs to be stopped – how hard is it to dispose of the waste you produce? This guy obviously found it hard but was fined for doing it.
• This is why we need to start living more sustainable with less impact – this is our home. It is apart of this.
• No Impact Man’s great tips on creating change in your organisation. Want more – check out our blog post about this here.
• Why Doing One Thing does make a difference.
• The Empire State Building is going green here.
• Plastiki made it!
• Cool waste bin labels – we upgraded ours.
• Worldometers - there are some scary numbers here (especially the number of species extinct this year).
• Watch this great video on how e-waste is broken down into reusable parts – here.

Have a great waste free weekend.

Last week I posted about reducing waste to landfill through better work waste management systems and asked our readers to send in their new/innovative/creative waste management systems in their offices. My sister-in law happened across the blog post (cos’ she follows us on Twitter here too) and sent in the above photos and the following comment:

“At my workplace we have recently implemented a strategy which Crown Research Institutes have been doing for a while. In your office you get a large cardboard tray for recycling and a tiny wee box for rubbish. Then you have to empty these yourselves at one of the depots. Unfortunately we don’t currently have a strategy for organics, so the depots only have landfill, glass/plastic, and paper/cardboard. The cleaners no longer empty bins in our offices and only empty these larger communal bins.”

Thanks Nicola. This is a great example of in-office waste managment.

Simon Williams

Our latest Green Collar Job Q&A is with Simon Williams. Now, we haven’t actually met (or interacted) with Simon (yet) but we have with Sue Coutts (from Wanaka Wastebusters) who passed on the Green Collar Job Q&A to a few of the people who work for Wastebusters and Simon is one of them. He is the Enviroschools Facilitator, Zero Waste Educator and graphic designer  at Wanaka Wastebusters.

Education for sustainability is Simon’s thing. For the last 3 – 4 years he has facilitated EfS within the Lakes District of Aotearoa, New Zealand, with the local early childhood, primary, high schools, youth groups & community. He delivers the Enviroschools and Zero Waste Education programmes with passion, energy and commitment. Simon loves working at Wanaka Wastebusters, the dynamic and energetic way of working really suits. When he’s not immersed in EfS he uses his graphic design and photography skills to promote sustainable living to his community.

Simon is part of a growing number of people who are using their skills to further sustainable living ideals – thanks Simon for your answers!

1.    What do you do to live more sustainably (with a low impact) in your life?
I try to minimise my waste, am conscious of home energy consumption, I buy quality products that I expect to last a long time.

2.    How do you live more sustainably at work?
Print as little as possible, recycle and compost my waste, make the most of travelling, using the least amount of energy possible, promote sustainable practices to many people  I work with.

3.    What do you  think is the biggest environmental issue we need to deal with in Christchurch/New Zealand?
That more, big and economic growth are best.

4.    What makes you smile?
snowboarding, amongst many other things, and the colour yellow.

5.    What is your biggest pet peeve?
People talking using only clichés and power terms, it tells me they don’t fully understand what they are talking about and it’s so ambiguous….grrrrrrrrrrrrr

6.  What is your favourite colour and why?
White because it is a combination of every colour…….then yellow because it makes me smile

7.    Do you have a favourite place in the world? Describe why?
2nd pipe at Treble cone……it’s so much fun

8.    What’s your connection to SIFT?
I don’t have one

9.    Do you remember your favourite teacher and why they were your favourite?
I’ve had many favourite teachers, the ones who inspire me to change the way I think and question my staid opinions

10.    What do you want to leave behind?
Inspiration

11.    What do you think the future will bring?
Fun and lots of smiles on top of many heart wrenching tears

12.    Who is someone you really admire and why?
Richard Feynman – One of the world greatest thinkers with the ability to communicate amazingly complex things with everyone in a fun and engaging fashion.

13.    What is happening outside your window right now?
I don’t have a window right now.

14.    What is your favourite breakfast?
Full English

15.    What is the best piece of advice you can give us?
Don’t talk to me in clichés

Furniture is being moved around today in the office including the massive board table we bought last year being moved upstairs. Thanks to one of our trustees Dixon McIvor and his band of strong lifters! Hope they go okay moving the massive bits of glass! And the really early daffodils bought earlier in the week are still letting off a very spring fragrance and provide great loveliness throughout our working day as well!

A few great links have come our way over the past week:

• How to make gift bags from newspaper (love this idea!) on How about Orange blog.
• Wellingtonians can now recycle more plastic than before. Numbers 1 to 6 can now be put in the recycling bin. More here from Scoop.
• Carbon Neutral coat hangers – this guy has big plans – via Re-Nest.
• Funding for the world’s largest Reuse network has been launched by actress Joanna Lumley and London Mayor Boris Johnson.
• Beautiful Gorilla gardening with living quotes on walls from A Bloomsbury Life.
• Shoes made from left over bits of wood from Swedish artist Liza Fredrika Aslund here via Bit Rebels.
• Bike powered tools in Guatemala via Re-Nest – what a great idea!
• Couple in the US went waste free for a whole year (just like our friends Waveney and Matthew at RubbishFree.co.nz).

Have a wonderful waste free weekend.

Happened on this lovely educational song by Jack Johnson. It starts about a minute and half into the video.  It’s a great little song to teach children  about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You can watch another version on You Tube here – it gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day! “Because three it’s the magic number… Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!”

Comspec have a flash new website with a great video on the opening of the plant. You can read more about how the Sustainable Initiatives Fund helped Comspec here with finanical assitance in the form of a loan or check out their video here.

Martha Stewart Living Test Kitchen Waste Station

While catching up on some blog reading over the weekend I spied the above inspiring yet simple waste station in the test kitchen of Martha Stewart Living Omnidmedia in New York via Martha Stewart’s blog. You can just see that there are more bins on the other side as well. I love the Landfill sign “This is quit-zies no take backs” and that they have  a bin for the chickens!

What is great about this waste station is that it works within the function of that particular work space – the test kitchen; it includes a bin for organic waste (for the chickens) as well as the other types of waste recycling or recovery. Not only does the signage fit with the MSL brand but it is also super simple and easy to see what goes where.

When it comes to reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill from businesses and organisations it is interesting to note two things: 1) Anecdotal research* suggests that household waste accounts for about 3.8% of all waste to landfill (the rest is commercial and industrial and construction and demolition) and 2) for some reason those who recycle at home may not necessarily recycle at work. This shows that our next step to reduce waste to landfill needs to come in the commercial and industrial and construction and demolition areas. And the first easy step is to set up easy and efficient waste management in your own business. For some this might mean they have access to council provided bins or bags for others this will mean hiring bins from independent waste management businesses. Know the types of waste you produce and what the best way is to 1) reduce it and 2) to recycle it.

Promote the benefits to reducing waste and installing an efficient waste management system to ensure buy in from all levels of the oraganisation. There will be benefits to the bottom line with cost savings for procurement (buying less paper) and waste managment (reducing to a smaller bin). Make it relevant to your staff, easy to use and understand and possibly a little fun with some good signage. Lots of internal communications on the hows and whys is important.

It is also good to consider all types of workers in your business and organisation and how they produce waste. If you have people that spend most of their time on the road install a couple of small bags in their vehicles to take the rubbish. Office bound workers can walk a short distance to a centralised waste station on each floor or house the waste station in the cafeteria or work kitchen. It is also important that those who empty the waste bins understand the importance of ensuring the right waste goes into the right bin that is collected by your council – don’t forget to talk to the cleaners too. You could even promote this to your customers, suppliers and visitors. Work with suppliers to reduce packaging, work with customers to move to less packaging for your own product or service and promote the waste management system to visitors so they know what to do with the waste they might bring with them (like lunch packaging!).

Recognition and awareness of the waste your business or organisation produces, reducing that waste and then moving to a long term efficient waste system will have benefits for the environment, for the bottom line and for your brand value.

Here are some other waste station ideas:

MSL recycling centre

Recycling Frame from Matteria Shop via BLtd

Re-Nest Recycling Station

Recycle Bins from Lowes

The SIFT Office Waste System - Organics, Landfill, Recycling

I have noticed that a lot of the links I have included are American based. There are some great New Zealand companies around that provide different bins for different uses for waste management and even just suping up some old cardboard boxes will do the trick. For Cantabrians try Agpac who stock Urba bins. You can get an organics bin like the one in the SIFT photo as well as great stackable bins for all your different waste streams.

We would love to see any creative or just plain practical office or business recycling. Send us your photos and we will post them here on the SIFT blog.

Images: MSL Recycling Centre, Matteria Shop Frame, Re-Nest Recycling Station, Lowes.

*From Richard Lloyd at Becon

Bicycles for Recycling at Resource Recycling (ChCh)

These weeks are flying by – soon we will be talking about how to have a waste free Christmas and summer holiday and feeling the heat rather than the cold! But, in the meantime here are some cheery mid-Winter links for your Friday.

• How to make your own magazine files – genius from Re-Nest.
• A treehugger article by Fred Pearce on the growing problem of consumption not population here.
• A possible solution to textiles waste from NYC here.
• Ideas for recycling old linen here.
• Green Investment Bank proposed for the UK reported by the Guardian here.
• New Waste Facilities Survey from the MfE here.

Have a Waste Free Weekend.

Fashion Trade - www.countryroad.com

Following on from Olivia’s blog on the Lyttleton Harbour Festival of lights and the ‘clothing swap-o-rama-rama’, we have found out that there is another opportunity for eco-friendly fashionistas to pay it forward with their well worn duds.

Introducing the launch of Fashion Trade on 1st July, being run by Country Road in co-operation with the Red Cross. Fashion Trade is a clothing donation program that focuses on rewarding Country Road customers, and their social conscience, by giving a $10 Country Road voucher to be spent in store on any item over $50 in value, when clothes are donated to the Red Cross (must include at least one Country Road item of clothing). Country Road is an international brand with 11 stores throughout New Zealand. The clothes are going directly to the Red Cross which has 6 shops in the Canterbury region, so you can be sure that your donation is reaching people in who are in need. More information on Fashion Trade here.  Or to find out more about the work of Red Cross visit www.redcross.org.nz

Spare a thought to the effects textiles have on local landfill every year: Textiles waste accounted for 4% of all waste to landfill in the 2007/08 year, which to make more tangible  equates to approximately 126,000 tonnes. Think about every time you overfill your suitcase to go on holiday (it is about that much added to landfill per person per year).

Follow Country Road’s lead, and ask your favourite clothing retailers what they are doing to minimise the amount of textile waste that is landing in Canterbury’s landfills. As the consumers, our power is in our wallets; by preferring to spend with the brands that instill a social conscience and are actually reducing their impact on the environment, than less environmentally aware brands who are sure to follow suit.

This got us thinking of all the cool ways to reinvent your current wardrobe, or tips to reduce the amount of textile waste that is being sent to landfill.

1) Have a swapping session – (This really is one for the ladies!) – but it requires no money to change hands, just a big enough lounge to sprawl all of your no longer worn clothes, and sitting room for who ever else is invited to swap your clothes with. Beware, it can get ugly!

2) Quality over quantity. In a buy now society, sometimes it is hard to resist opening up the wallet and splurging on the current must haves. Restricting your buying to fewer, higher quality purchases, will ensure that they last beyond one winter and will take a lot longer before they reach landfill.

3) Be environmentally conscious when choosing what your clothes are made out of – We have wools from numerous animals,  bamboo, mercot, cotton and hemp to name a few, these natural fibers wear beautifully – and if you shop carefully, a lot of labels are now listing their fair trade inclusion – so you know the farmers and manufacturers are getting a just deal too. So you no longer need to buy anything with poly in the ingredients list.

4) Buy vintage and second hand. There are lots of great second hand and vintage stores around Canterbury including places like Save Mart and also online like Trademe.

Joanna Langford – Up from the plainlands (detail) 2009. Recycled plastic bags, bamboo skewers, sushi grass, 12 volt LED lights, fans and electrical wiring. Commissioned for Brought to Light: A New View of the Collection 2009. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Jonathan Smart Gallery.