Articles Food and Lifestyle Waste - Green In the City
| Waste - Green In the City |
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| Monday, 26 July 2010 10:07 | |
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Us city dwellers have benefits that our country dwelling friends do not. We are just around the corner, or within fifteen minutes drive from many essential services. Our mail gets delivered every day to our letterbox out the front and our garbage gets collected weekly. Country folk often have weekly or bi-weekly mail deliveries with many having to drive out to their letterboxes, on the edge of their property or right near the letterboxes of their neighbours. They have to deal with their own rubbish on site, or take a big load to the tip once or twice a year. While weekly rubbish collection has its distinct advantages, it leaves us very disconnected with the amount of waste we produce as city dwellers.
We all know that the Western world produces a large amount of waste, which needs to be halted (both on a storage level and from the overconsumption that the waste indicates). Reducing your waste that gets collected each week is one way we can be green while living in the city. Most city areas have regular collection of recyclables. It is important that you follow the guidelines about what can and can't be recycled, and how to prepare that (bundling papers together, washing jars, separating different classes into different bins). Rubbish incorrectly placed in the recycling bin or excess food left on recyclables can contaminate an enormous amount of materials and render them useless, creating more waste. City dwellers (particularly those in high density housing) may not have a lot of garden waste, but we all have food scraps, such as apple cores, vegetable peelings and bread crusts. There are several different options for this food waste. Small compost bins are available from hardware stores and can be placed in small courtyards. Worm farms don't smell and don't take up a lot of space – you could even have one on your balcony, if you have a shady spot, or it can even be done under the sink (see http://www.naturallifemagazine.com/0512/NovDec05.pdf). If you don't have an outdoor space you can use for composting, there is an indoor option. Bokashi Composting Buckets (http://www.bokashi.com.au/) can be used in any indoor space and adding the micro organisms that come with the buckets turns all food scraps, including meat and dairy, into usable compost. There are other options available, although mostly from overseas. Reducing your “carbon footprint” doesn't need to be a chore, and reducing your waste is an easy way to go about it. This article originally appeared in Mixtapezine |
