Wow, May already! We are entering our third month of the Green Initiatives challenges and everyone here at the committee hopes you have been enjoying them. Don’t forget to share your completed challenges on the Mount Pleasant Green Initiatives Group on Facebook! We also hope to hear all about it at a potential event in June.
For this month, let’s focus on reducing your household waste. Did you know that the City of Calgary is moving toward diverting 70% of waste from city landfills by 2025? (https://www.calgary.ca/waste/residential/makeup.html). This sounds like a big idea at first, but it can be broken down into a few small tasks that can make a really big impact.
Great news! If you made it to our community clean up event this month, then you are off to a great start! We look forward to sharing the results from the clean-up event with you soon. Below are a few challenges to keep the momentum going and if you did not make it out, don’t worry, these challenges will get you started on practicing waste reduction in your home.
Challenge 1: Switch at least one of your bills online so that you go paperless.
Challenge 2: Get your Mount Pleasant “no junk mail” sticker – reach out to Vanja or Veronica in the Mount Pleasant Green Initiatives Facebook Group to get one of these.
Challenge 3: Learn to mend and repair. Try to fix one thing in your house this month that you planned to trash. This could be fixing a clothing item by sewing or maybe repairing a piece of furniture.
Challenge 4: Be mindful this month when grocery shopping – bring your own bags for check out, bring reusable produce bags, go in with a list and buy only what you know you will consume. Consider buying non-perishable items in bulk to reduce packaging. Bringing reusable containers such as mason jars or clean peanut butter jars to bulk food stores is a great way to accomplish this.
Year Long Bonus Challenge: Challenge yourself to a waste audit. Keep track of the amount that goes into your black cart, (by weight, size of garbage bin or bag), write it down and make a point to reduce this every month for the rest of the year. See if you can hit a 70% reduction!
If you want to get involved and be a part of making Mount Pleasant a greener community, we would love to have you join the committee. Please email [email protected] for more information or if you have any questions. As well, please check out our Mount Pleasant Green Initiatives Group on Facebook! You can find us on the Mount Pleasant Community Association page. The Facebook group is a great place to share your completed challenges and check in to see what others are doing.
Have a great month,
The MPCA Green Initiatives Committee
