Building a Better Bin - part VI

So as we bring this little journey about recycling bins comes to an end it would be foolish of me to not mention all the hidden green elements of our bins. I often find that people respect things more when they know a little something about it. Aside from the basic elements that I discussed about our bins, I want to share some fun tidbits.

I called this entry green to the core for a reason. When the bins were being designed my supervisor asked, “What are the bins going to be made out of?” He thought that it was important that if we try to be greener than we should really be greener. The design team agreed and so we specified FSC wood. We also specified that all the glues used be non-toxic. We actually toyed around with the idea of using recycled ceramics for the counter-tops except... it would have added hundreds of dollars to the price of the bins.

While designing the bins we asked the good people of sanitary services how we could make these bins so that they would be more helpfully for them. As it turns out a lot of the recycling bins experience what we call contamination - one of which is liquid contamination. You have to understand that the cleaning staff do have to sort through a lot of the waste to make sure that the right things are going into the right bins. One of their biggest pet-peeves was when someone would dump their coffee into the paper recycling bin, contaminating the paper and making the paper unrecyclable. They told us that they wanted a sink.

This kind of threw us back a little; how do you put a sink inside a recycling counter? In the end we had to turn to coffee shops to figure out how to deal with coffee. You see the solution was starring us in the face every single time that we went to Bridgehead. In many coffee shops in fact, there are small sinks built into the condiments counter so that you can dump out a little bit of coffee if you have too much in your cup. At first we were scared that we would have to connect a sink to sewage pipes in order to be able to get rid of the liquids. At the Bridgehead on Slater Street we saw that they simply had their coffee and other liquids draining into a simple container that they just dumped down the sink nightly.

Now before you start asking if adding a sink was really the best use of resources I am going to jump out ahead of this and say YES! Think of it this way, if you dump your coffee into the mixed paper recycling and all paper inside gets soaked, than that paper is going to sit in the recycling bin and eventually get mouldy. When that happens we won’t be able to recycle the paper at all. Also, think about what the liquids (coffee, water, cola, whatever) do to the weight of the waste. Liquids are dense; increasing the weight of the waste means shipping liquid off to the landfill at a financial and environmental cost. So simply pouring these liquids down the drain actually reduces our tipping fees and reduces the amount of CO2 generated by transportation.

One of the interesting environmental features came out during a meeting with the brass of Physical Resources Services. With the introduction of another compartment for liquid disposal, there was a concern that the new counters would be too large. We needed a bin for paper, plastic, metal, glass, liquids, and waste. Mario Bouchar, former director of the service, asked a simple question, “I can recycle plastic, metal, and glass all together at home... why can’t I do that here?”

The answer was simple, you could. So we comingled the recyclables and saved space. More importantly we eliminated the need to have cleaning staff clean out an extra bin and use another garbage bag for no reason. Even more, we are finding less broken glass in the recycling system because the plastic and metal is cushioning the fall of the glass.

And finally we designed the recycling counters with the ability to adapt to future needs. I know this might seem strange but early on in the process we recognized that the configuration of the bins would have to change some day. Today we don’t have a comprehensive composting system but we likely will tomorrow. Maybe one day we would have to undo the co-mingled recycling stream or add a section for e-waste. So we took a novel approach and designed the signs on the bin so that they could be changed at any time. We even designed the openings on the bins so that they could be changed depending on whether you wanted a big square or a smaller circular hole.

So there you have it. We like to think that the lessons we learned about our bins could be used to help others create their own ‘better bins’. If I had to sum up all our lessons into a couple of points I would say;

• listen to your community and let them be a part of the solution
• be flexible, there are many things that can and will change so anticipate to the best of your knowledge
• make things as easy as possible for the users, if it isn’t intuitive for them they won’t use it

La popularité du mot « VERT »

Vous avez sûrement remarqué, lorsque vous faites votre épicerie, les nombreux produits à emballage de couleurs nature avec les noms « vert », « organique » et « biologique ». Il semble que c’est de plus en plus populaire de nos jours. Évidemment, les entreprises ont toujours connus à bien s’adapter aux besoins des consommateurs et les gens ressentent le besoin de protéger leur santé, leur famille et l’environnement. Certains croient pouvoir réaliser ceci en achetant toute une gamme de ces produits « verts ». Cependant, pouvons-nous avoir confiance dans nos achats?

TerraChoice a fait une étude fascinante pour identifier les produits qui sont victimes de « lavage vert » (http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/). Selon cette firme de marketing environnementale d’Ottawa, le « lavage vert » est « le fait de tromper les consommateurs à propos des pratiques environnementales d’une entreprise ou des avantages environnementaux d’un produit ou service. » Ainsi, comment pouvons –nous distinguer le bon du mal?

Il existe des logos d’écocertification comme l’ÉcoLogo qu’on retrouve sur les contenants et emballage des produits qui rencontrent les normes environnementales. Faites attention aux logos faux! Pour plus de renseignements, faites référence à l’étude de TerraChoice.

Vous voulez faire votre part pour protéger votre santé, famille et l’environnement?

• Achetez donc des produits organiques certifiés (http://www.terrachoice-certified.com/fr/)!
• Supportez le commerce local (http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/ofsc/en/buylocal/buylocal.html)! Cela aidera l’économie canadienne et réduira les gaz à effets de serre produits par le transport d’un item importé d’un pays étranger.
• Optez pour des produits végétariens (http://www.vegetariantimes.com/%20)! L’élevage de bétail requiert beaucoup de ressources, comme l’eau et l’énergie fossile. Selon David Suzuki, 283 grammes de bœuf requiert 85 fois plus d’eau pour produire le même montant de pommes de terre!

C’est à vous de faire les bons choix personnels qui aideront, peu à peu, à changer notre monde!

Danielle Perreault

Building a Better Bin part V

For this next instalment I am going to focus on yet another form of convenience, one size fits all. The concept of one-stop shopping is nothing new. Why wouldn’t you want to concentrate as many activities as possible into a single functional space? That was the driving principle behind the new recycling centers; one stop shopping for recycling on campus. We really wanted to do this for many reasons; mostly for efficiency of resources and the ability to increase the amount of waste captured.

So the goal was to create the most multi-purposed recycling station in one location. This meant that the first thing that we had to do was marry the waste and recycling systems. Two different disposal locations means too many mitigating factors. What if the recycling bin is a little further than the waste bin? What if one of the waste bin gets moved away? Well… people are likely going to put the wrong things in the wrong bins. Now if we squish all the bins into one station, not only do we eliminate some of the selective convenience, we also reduce the amount of travel time that cleaning staff take to wander from bin to bin.

Next, we found that one of the big problems that we were having was that some of our bins had flaps. I kid you not, flaps were a huge problem. You see after a good amount of use the flaps would become dirty or worn as piece after piece of waste passed by the flap. The flap then starts looking more and more unkept, and by extension dirty, unsanitary, and potentially a health issue. The solution was to simply remove the flaps. This removed the problem and made the bins more inviting.

One of the more embarrassing considerations that we had forgotten was accessibility. Traditional recycling centers were designed with a hole on top of the counter for users to drop their waste into. This was a bad idea for two reasons; first you couldn’t leave items on the counter that you didn’t know if you could recycle (which happens a lot) or if they were too big to recycle; second if you were sitting in a wheel chair you couldn’t see the hole. The solution here was to put the hole in the front of the bin (this also allowed us to put a sign right in front of the holes).

That kind of brings us to the next point which was a question of signage. There has actually been a tremendous amount of debate about this point at many conferences and institutions I have visited. A simple text that states “plastic” or “mixed fibres” isn’t good enough. People need more interactive signs that show pictures, preferably pictures of the kinds of items that they have in their hands as they are reading the signs. We even went a step further and colour coded the signs to further distinguish the categories of recyclables. These colours were selected to have differing degrees of intensity to ensure that even if you are colour blind you can still differentiate the tones.

(Example of bad bin labeling)

There is more but I am going to leave it here. The idea is that humans are predisposed to try to take the easiest path when it serves their interests. With this in mind we needed to make sure that our recycling centers served as many functions as was possible without confusing the users. -jon-

Citrons et rebuts | Lemons and waste

L’activité « Déposez et dégagez » est un programme en résidence, où, à la fin de l’année, nous procédons à la collecte d’articles non-voulus des étudiants. Ces articles sont par la suite triés, et envoyés à des organismes en manque de biens matériaux particuliers. Cette année, grâce à l’activité « Déposez et dégagez » nous avons évité de jeter et de gaspiller 1,7 tonnes de vêtements, d’articles de cuisine, de livres, de fournitures de bureau, etc. (objets donnés à des organismes ainsi qu’à la communauté universitaire). Ce chiffre correspond à tout l’acide citrique produit sur la Terre l’année dernière, ou au poids d’un tracteur mini-CAT ! Merci à tous ceux et celles qui nous ont aidés, soit par leur temps, en prêtant de l’espace, ou par un don. Ce ne serait pas possible sans vous !

The “Dump and Run” is a program where, at the end of the year, we collect items that students in residences no longer want. These are then sorted, and donated to specific charities in need of specific items. This year, the Dump and Run saved about 1.7 tonnes of items from going to waste. These items included clothing, kitchenware, books, office supplies, etc and were donated to charities in need as well as the University Community. These 1.7 tonnes is equivalent to all of the citric acid produced on Earth last year; or the weight of a mini CAT tractor! Thank you so much to everyone who helped us out, either with space, time, or donated items. It wouldn’t be possible without you!

-brigitte