Show the earth some love
Use your blue box and green bin
Are you celebrating Valentine’s Day this week? Don’t forget to give the earth – and the City’s waste collectors – a little love by placing your waste materials in the right bins! Doing so will help reduce what gets sent to landfills and make the collection process run smoother.
Here are some quick tips on where to dispose of common Valentine’s Day goodies:
- Balloons and candy wrappers: Place deflated balloons and foil candy wrappers in the garbage.
- Chocolate boxes: Put empty cardboard boxes and metal tins in the blue box.
- Flowers: When you’re done with cut flowers, place them in the green bin. The paper bouquet wrapping goes in the blue box.
- Paper cards: If your Valentine’s cards are made of 100 per cent paper, place them in the blue box. All other types of cards go in the garbage.
Food scraps
If you have leftover food scraps from cooking a Valentine’s brunch or dinner, don’t throw them away – they are not garbage! Instead, reduce food waste by:
- placing leftover eggshells, fats, oils, grease, fruit and vegetable peels in the green bin. Ensure fats, oils and grease have cooled and hardened.
- turning food scraps into compost to fertilize your garden – you can still backyard compost throughout the winter!
- getting creative with leftovers by transforming them into a new snack or meal for another day.
Remember to place all items curbside by 7 a.m. on your scheduled collection day. Waste collectors will not return for materials set out late.
Think before you toss!
If you don’t know where to dispose of an item, use the search function in the online ‘What Goes Where?’ sorting tool to check. You can also download the free Recycle Coach app from the Apple App Store or Google Play for more sorting help. The app provides waste-less tips and a personalized collection schedule with optional alerts on what to put to the curb each week.
To learn more about waste collection in Vaughan, visit vaughan.ca/waste.
For updates and news as they happen, subscribe to Vaughan News and follow the official corporate channels on X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
