For those of us who are decluttering and aren’t quite sure how to get rid of stuff, here’s a link to a Charity Village website that lists agencies accepting donations. Not all of it applies to us here in York Region, but it’s a start.
http://www.charityvillage.ca/cv/charityvillage/donate.asp
From www.yorkregion.com
Sep 12, 2007 09:34 PM
By: Patrick Mangion
Loblaws has announced the start of its plastic bag recycling program in municipalities where plastic bag recycling is not available.
The company expects to divert more than 51 million of the bags from landfills during the first year of the program.
Recycling receptacles will be available to shoppers inside Loblaws stores.
The plastic bags will then be recycled into new usable plastic products.
In April of this year, Loblaws made a commitment to reduce one billion plastic grocery bags from Canada’s landfills within one year.
The bag recycling program is available in 60 stores, with additional stores coming soon.
New! The Town of Aurora is now accepting used laser and inkjet cartridges and unwanted cell phones (no batteries) and donating them to The Canadian Diabetes Association Recycle Ink program either to be re-used or recycled. Your efforts will divert waste from landfills and provide the Association with much needed funding. Bring your empty cartridges and unwanted cell phones (with the batteries removed) to the Public Works department, Operation Center at 9 Scanlon Cr., Building A, between 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Monday to Friday. For a list of eligible cartridges or more information, please call 905-727-3123 ext. 3447.
Here’s the word from Canada Post itself on how to reduce junk mail, including that in group mailboxes…….
Customers with door-to-door, rural route, and apartment postal box delivery can affix a clear notice on the outside of their mailbox or place a notice inside their box. In either case, Canada Post will stop delivery and place an acknowledgement note in the box.
If customers with community mailbox, group mailbox or any other centralized form of delivery affix a notice on the front of the mail receptacle, Canada Post will deliver an acknowledgement card asking the customer to place the
notice inside the door of the box. Once that is done, delivery will stop. Canada Post will not distribute stickers, but will respect any stickers or form of notice flagging an individual’s decision to stop receiving unaddressed Admail.
The only unaddressed material we will continue to deliver regardless of the presence of stickers are: unaddressed House of Commons mailings; Materials from Elections Canada and provincial Chief Electoral Officers; Municipal electoral notices (including boundary changes and referendum
notices) and community newspapers.
Ever since I began this project, I’ve noticed bags of garbage sitting continuously in front of the plazas on the east side of Yonge between Mark Street and Orchard Heights.
I’ve been in touch with the town at least four times about this and have heard that the merchants there must be confused about their recycling dates.
Then I’ve been thanked for monitoring the area and once the email went unanswered and now the town has advised me to contact by-law services.
Yonge Street is a main thoroughfare and the constant presence of garbage on it does not reflect well on us.
Here’s hoping the by-law boys can get the merchants to comply.
I’ve just come back from a trip to the French River near Sudbury and took a trip to the local landfill in Noelville.
We contributed by far the most rusted-out stuff. In the heaps we saw lots of bikes, wooden skids and furniture.
The attendant-and-garbage-flattener has a little business on the side. People bring him their unwanted stuff and he sells it.
There I saw a retro kitchen set: six chairs in original olive green vinyl with dipped back and table with two leaves. On craigslist and eBay, this would be worth some money.
Instead, it’s sitting out in the weather getting ruined.
Seems recycling still has people stymied. Here’s a column from the Era-Banner on recycling plastics that should set you straight.
By: Ellen Mole
All recycling is good. It saves solid waste from going to the landfill and it takes less energy to make something new from something old than to make it from raw materials.
But plastic recycling is perhaps more virtuous than other types of recycling. That’s because plastic is made from oil, which as we all know, is a non-renewable resource in ever-scarcer supply. What’s more, plastic takes a long time to break down in landfill and often releases toxic chemicals if incinerated.
The proposal to reduce plastic bag use in Ontario is great news, because plastic bags cannot be recycled in blue box programs and private recycling collection points cannot handle the volume. But it’s only the tip of the plastic waste mountain.
Fortunately, Aurora’s blue box program expanded its plastics collection a few years ago, making it easier to recycle a wider variety of plastics. Yet confusion still abounds, as shown by those who have taken the Aurora Environmental Advisory Committee’s Blue Box Challenge.
The challenge presents more than 30 household items, some common, some not. Challengers are asked to sort them between the blue box and the garbage. Even those who consider themselves eco-savvy are usually surprised by the number of items they get wrong. And plastic items seem to be the ones most commonly mis-sorted.
So here’s a countdown of the steps for recycling plastics.
Step 1: Check for a number. Most plastic items will have the triangular recycling symbol with a number in the centre. It may be tiny, so keep hunting. If you’ve checked an item thoroughly and found no number, the item must go in the garbage.
Step 2: Lucky number 7. Anything numbered 8 or above has to go in the garbage. Anything numbered 1 through 7 can be rinsed and put in the blue box - with a few exceptions.
Step 3: Check for exceptions. · Motor oil and gasoline containers cannot go in recycling, regardless of their number. They go to the household hazardous waste depot.
· Household cleaner and pesticide bottles can be recycled, even if their contents were toxic, but only if they are empty. If you have leftover contents you don’t want, you should take the container to an hazardous waste depot, rather than dumping it.
· Styrofoam blocks and food containers may be labelled number 6 but they cannot go in the blue box.
· Lids and plastic spray apparatus from containers numbered 1 through 7 cannot be included if they are not themselves labelled with a number. All labelled lids should be placed in the blue box separately from their containers.
· Plastic films, including food wrap, milk bags and shopping bags, cannot go in the blue box.
Ellen Mole is a former member of Aurora’s environmental advisory committee. The committee can be reached through its website at www.e-aurora.ca/eac, or via the newsroom at newsroom@erabanner.com.
Green Dimes is a for-profit California-based organization that for a fee of $10 $3 a month stops junk mail for you, including sending you stickers to put on your mailbox proclaiming it a “Junk Mail Free Zone.”
And, it plants one tree a month for each member through its partners, Trees for the Future, Sustainable Harvest International and American Forests. More information about them and where tree-planting is taking place on the Green Dimes website, www.greendimes.com, under Partners.
The organization says it’s stopped more than 400,000 pounds of junk mail (including catalogues), planted more than 175,000 trees and saved almost 1-million gallons of water since it began last September.
About a month ago, it came to Canada, saying households here receive 13 billion pieces of admail annually. That’s a lot of trees.
Anyone stuck with stuff after spring-cleaning is welcome to shed it at the event below. Please note that items need to be of saleable quality. Otherwise, you’re just asking someone else to throw it out.
As part of Public Works Week, York Region is holding an Open House and Reusable Goods Drop-off Day at its Waste Management Centre, 90 Bales Drive, East Gwillimbury on Sat. May 26.
Tour the facility, bring shredded paper in clear bags for dropoff and unwanted items to donate to Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill. The items must be of saleable quality, good enough to give to family and friends.
For a list of what’s accepted visit
http://www.york.ca/Services/Garbage+and+Recycling/Reusable+Goods+Collection+Program.htm
And, a limited number of composters will be sold at $10 each.
Runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Still picking up coffee cups, water bottles and cans wherever I go.
If you bring your own travel mug for filling at Tim Hortons, you save 10 cents off your coffee.
This I learned after calling customer service in confusion. The Tims on Wellington told me I would save seven cents. It’s not, it’s 10 cents and has been since last July. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.
Customer service is going to call them and straighten it out.
The customer service number is 1-888-601-1616.
