Styrofoam.. Probably the most pointless substance in the world (except when it comes down to packaging your valuables) can be so damn hard to get rid of in an environmentally friendly manners. Here is an awesome blog about the “do’s” and “don’ts” of getting rid of styrofoam, but I would love to hear your ideas about what we should do with the substance.
Styrofoam, made from polysterene, is petrol based and is bad bad bad! Those innocent little styrofoam baubles and cups contain carcinogens. Now how happy are you with them getting up close and personal with your food and your food appliances?
A box filled with environmental evil...
Not only is styrofoam bad for you, its bad for the environment! It doesn’t bio-degrade, it creates huge amounts of air pollution and it is made from a non-renewable resource!
So what can we do about it?
Well we can say no… but then if your toaster breaks and you need a new one then it is still going to be packaged in styrofoam. So while we can try to change the behaviour of those around us by switching styrofoam cups to keep-cups or mugs that are washed, there really needs to be changed.
What can we use for packaging in place of styrofoam, that still is light weight, to keep shipping costs down, while offering enough protection to fragile items? get your thinking caps on and share your ideas!
A nice little Friday interlude – a video of the Johnson family from the blog Zero Waste Home (USA). Everything looks so uncluttered and simplified and achievable. It would be great to be able to take our own containers for meat, cheese and fish as Bea Johnson does to our supermarkets. We look forward to reading more about what the Johnson family do to be zero waste.
Zero Waste Home Video - click on the image to go to the site to watch
Have a read of the blog and you might some new ideas and tips to make your life one with less waste.
At the close of another week here are some of the cool/interesting things we have found from around the world:
LoveNotes – Love Notes is a New Zealand company that provides a collection service to businesses to upcycle their one-sided non confidential paper into note books. Love it!
Children’s toys made from recycled wood and plastic from Go Green Games.
We’re back and ready to go! Hope you had a great holiday and a happy new year.
Lots of plans at SIFT for 2011 but mostly we will keep on doing what we did last year: providing vital financial assistance to projects that reduce waste to landfill for Canterbury. Hopefully though there will be an increased awareness of the need to reduce consumption first and foremost (and secondly to demand more environmentally healthy package i.e. less plastic). This, by far, is the quickest and easiest way to reduce the amount of waste that is produced.
Here is a quick look back at our favourite/most interesting blog posts from 2010:
Phew – what a year! Looking forward to seeing what 2011 will hold for us both locally, nationally and globally. Don’t forget to check out all the great links from the regular Friday Favourites and the Green Collar Job Q&A’s from earlier in the year.
The 100% Recyclable and Compostable Christmas Tree
Here at the Sustainable Initiatives Fund office we enjoy getting in the Christmas spirit while implementing our core values of sustainability and minimisation of wastestreams. For these reasons, it was fitting for our office Christmas tree to be one which embodies the three R’s, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
The ‘tree’ is made from bamboo shoots and assembled with unbleached twine. We created our own decorations by using outdated business flyers: creating stars, Christmas chain and even a little angel. The decorations were held together and hung with cotton and we added small torn calico bows and finished the look off with a tree-topping star made from old office file dividers. Through creativity we have made a 100% recyclable and compostable* Christmas tree. The finishing product was so good that it will be the face of SIFT’s 2010 Christmas card!
Let us know how you are reducing your waste this Christmas.
A couple of entrepreneurial and environmentally positive locals from Christchurch are holding the Greatest Dress Sale Ever.
The sale is to be held on Saturday 4th December from 9am – 4pm at 86 Rattray Street, Riccarton. You can either get involved as a seller, a buyer or both!
For sellers: All you need to do is register by emailing
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. In the email please include; the size of the dress, the label, the style / brief description, the price you would like the dress sold for, and the minimum you would accept for the sale of the dress. If you want to sell your pre-loved dresses, there is a simple one-off fee, with no profit taken from the sale of your items.
$5 – ONE DRESS
$10 – TWO TO FIVE DRESSES
$15 – FIVE TO TEN DRESSES
$20 – TEN TO TWENTY DRESSES
The selling fee is to be deposited into a nominated bank account (please ask them via email) then drop your sale items of this week by arrangement through e-mail or at the sale address tomorrow (27th November), between 9am and 12pm. No more sale items will be accepted after Wednesday 1st December. Following the sale you will receive an email stating which items were sold and when to pick up your earnings!
For the buyers: The dress sale is on Saturday the 4th and it starts at 9am. Like all good sales it is advised that you get in quick to get the best picks. Private changing areas will be provided. So for all the women in Christchurch, gather your mothers, sisters, daughters and girlfriends and get involved with this fantastic local opportunity to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
This is a fantastic opportunity for all to get together for an enjoyable day while conciously shopping for your new (old) summer dress.
Repair is Better than Recycling – Making our things last longer is both more efficient and more cost effective than mining them for raw materials.
Repair saves the planet. Earth has limited resources and we can’t run a linear manufacturing process forever. The best way to be efficient is to reuse what we already have!
Repair saves you money. Fixing things is often free, and usually cheaper than replacing them, doing the repair yourself saves serious dough.
Repair teaches engineering. The best way to find out how something works is to take it apart!
If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it! Repair connects people and devices, creating bonds that transcend consumption. Self repair is sustainable.
Repair connects you with your things. Repair empowers and emboldens individuals. Repair transforms consumers into contributors. Repair inspires pride in ownership. Repair injects soul and makes things unique. Repair is independence. Repair requires creativity. Repair is green. Repair is joyful. Repair is necessary for understanding our things. Repair saves money and resources.
We Have The Right: To open and repair our things without voiding the warranty to devices that can be opened, to error codes and wiring diagrams, to troubleshooting instructions and flowcharts, to repair documentation for everything, to choose our own repair technician, to remove ‘Do not remove’ stickers, to repair things in the privacy of our own homes, to replace any and all consumables ourselves, to hardware that doesn’t require proprietary tools to repair, to available, reasonable priced service parts.
Put either one of these in your kitchen junk drawer and garage and remember that to repair something you own stops waste going to landfill and creat that bond that transcends consumption.
As with last week’s Green Collar Job Q&A with Simon from Wanaka Wastebusters we have not actually met Gina Dempster (also from Wanaka Wastebusters) but know that she is doing good green work. Gina looks after the communications for Wanaka Wastebusters, “pretty much anything that needs to be written is my responsibility” she says. That includes advertising, press releases, newsletters, leaflets and the website. “I work two days a week, and love the dynamic, unpredictable and energetic workplace here.” Before working at Wanaka Wastebusters, Gina was part of the media team for the Green Party in Parliament.
Here are her answers to our Green Collar Job Questions:
1. What do you do to live more sustainably (with a low impact) in your life?
I try not to throw too much out by recycling, composting, re-using things and fixing them up (although sewing is not my strong point so I have a whole basket of clothes waiting for mending day which never comes). I get satisfaction from finding the perfect second-hand object: old telephone poles to hold our deck up or a pair of nearly new ski pants for my sister. I grow most of our summer veggies and fruit, support local producers and avoid food packaging.
2. How do you live more sustainably at work?
At Wanaka Wastebusters our work is all about recycling, re-use and challenging people to think about what they really need. Our Green Christmas has been very popular over the last two years, encouraging people to give one-off gifts from our re-use shop. We have just insulated our office which means we get to take off our down jackets in the winter.
3. What do you think is the biggest environmental issue we need to deal with in Christchurch/New Zealand?
The current mode of thinking that resources are limitless.
4. What makes you smile?
Watching my four-year-old on his first ever powder run (he crashed all the way down).
5. What is your biggest pet peeve?
People who think they can’t make a difference, so it’s not worth trying.
6. What is your favourite colour and why?
Blue – because it’s the colour of the sky and the sea.
7. Do you have a favourite place in the world? Describe why?
Wanaka . I love seeing the mountains every day, especially against a clear sky at dusk.
8. What’s your connection to Sift?
Sift and Wanaka Wastebusters are working to minimise waste.
9. Do you remember your favourite teacher and why they were your favourite?
I think her name was Ms Gore, and she was my teacher in Std 2. I remember we studied medieval history and had a jousting tournament with newspaper swords. I got to be a knight and ride on two of my friends who were the horse – maybe they don’t remember that day so fondly.
10. What do you want to leave behind?
Happy kids (hopefully grown up by then). A world that values the earth.
11. What do you think the future will bring?
Sometimes I think chaos and darkness, but mostly I think communal strength and wiser ways of living.
12. Who is someone you really admire and why?
Barbara Kingsolver. For writing about things that matter.
13. What is happening outside your window right now?
It’s nearly dusk and the grey sky shows it’s that time when the temperature plummets. Time to go home and light the fire.
14. What is your favourite breakfast?
At the moment it’s scrambled eggs and gluten-free toast, or maybe some almonds and fruit.
15. What is the best piece of advice you can give us?
Once the wave forms, change happens quickly.
Lovely answers – thanks Gina. You can find more about Wanaka Wastebusters and the good work they are doing to reduce waste to landfill here.
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!”
Last Friday I visited the Becon Dry Waste Recovered Materials Facility in Woolston. The Becon Dry Waste RMF is the only one in New Zealand and is housed in one of the remaining buildings from the old Anderson’s Foundry. It is an impressive building with its old industrial peaked roofing and large industrial hanging lights. The waste processing machine doesn’t seem to fit right with the old style of the building but as Director Richard Lloyd agreed it is good to reuse an old building rather than build new – in-keeping with his business of reuse and recycling.
Richard Lloyd estimates that of the total amount of waste going to Kate Valley Landfill approximately a third could still be recovered and recycled. Richard has developed a site that has the potential to process more dry waste than they are currently taking (Becon is only processing 30% of the current Christchurch market at the moment). The Becon RMF focusses on construction, demolition and industrial dry waste streams. When asked what the spilt between household waste and commercial waste is Richard stated a surprising 3.8% for just households! Although, Richard stated that “kerbside recycling punches above it’s weight class…as it is a valuable educational tool.” So, the bulk of waste that the citizens of Canterbury produce is business, construction or demolition related. Items such as concrete, glass, untreated timber, packaging and plastics are all included.
Richard Lloyd is passionate about his business, about recovering wastes and making the environment a better place for his children.
Here are some photos from the visit:
The Start of the Recovery Process
The sorting machine
Sorted piles of plastic and timber
Baled Paper
Becon Director Richard Lloyd with chipped timber
What can't be recovered goes to Kate Valley Landfill
You can see more photos from the visit on our Flickr site here.
