Waste Reduction Week: food waste

Reduce, reuse, recycle and recover! Throughout Waste Reduction Week, celebrated until Sunday, Oct. 24, the City of Vaughan is providing tips on how residents can reduce their household waste, apply many new and simple waste-less habits and learn about our shared responsibility to the planet to cut down on waste.

Today’s Waste Reduction Week topic is food waste. According to the Recycling Council of Ontario, people and households across Canada waste more than approximately $10 billion worth of food each year. Organic materials, such as food, disposed of in a landfill produce methane gas, which is 25 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide.

Here are actions to consider to adopt waste-less food habits:

• Plan meals ahead so you only buy what you will eat.
• Store perishable items such as meat and produce properly so they last longer. Check York Region’s Good Food resource page for instructions and ideas.
• Get creative with leftovers – transform food scraps into a new meal.
• As a last resort, place leftover food in your green bin. Green bin material is transformed into nutrient-rich compost that is used to fertilize farmers’ fields.
• Turn your food scraps into garden fertilizer. The City provides backyard composters for sale at vaughan.ca/ServiceVaughan.

Unsure what items go where? Check first by downloading the Recycle Coach App through the Apple App Store or Google Play for information on sorting your items. The app provides waste-less tips and a personalized collection schedule with optional alerts on what to put to the curb each week. The City also offers an online sorting tool to quickly and easily check what item goes where using the search bar. Citizens can register online at any time to purchase garbage tags, blue boxes and green bins and exchange damaged or broken City-branded bins through Service Vaughan.

Zero waste starts now. The City of Vaughan challenges you to share your waste reduction efforts with a selfie or another picture or video using the hashtag #VaughanWastesLess on social media. For more information on waste services in Vaughan, visit vaughan.ca/waste.

The City of Vaughan has proclaimed Monday, Oct. 18 to Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021 as Waste Reduction Week to further its commitment to protecting the environment and fostering a more sustainable future – a priority outlined in the 2018-2022 Term of Council Service Excellence Strategic Plan. The week’s primary purpose is to celebrate the City’s environmental efforts and achievements while encouraging new innovative ideas and solutions for citizens to reduce their waste and conserve the environment.

The City of Vaughan is a leader in waste management. Vaughan’s early commitment to York Region’s SM4RT Living Plan (Waste Management Master Plan) further strengthens that leadership. This plan identifies initiatives that set the stage for waste management to 2059 and beyond, focusing on the four Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle and recover – working toward building a circular economy and a “world in which nothing goes to waste.”

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