Cutting the garbage.

Recycling programs aren't cheap but they keep the trash out of dumps. Six years after it started in 1986, Ontario's blue-box curbside recycling system diverted more than a million tonnes of rubbish away from sites across the province. Residential waste accounts for about one-third of the garbage generated in the province and most blue-box systems divert 14% to 20% of it into recycling.

Researchers who sifted through garbage dumps around Toronto in 1992 found that household recycling programs have brought benefits: they led to "a tremendous decrease in newspapers and a large decrease in glass found in landfill sights." Both decreased by weight and volume more than 50% after the start of the blue-box program.

In 1992, only about half of Canada's households had recycling services for paper, metal cans, and glass containers available to them. However, nearly seven out of eight of those households used the services; clearly, Canadians want to do something to help the environment.

In addition to sorting their garbage conservationists take re-usable bags shopping, adjust thermostats, buy paper products with recycled content, install low-flow shower heads, buy compact fluorescent bulbs and water-saving toilets, and use public transit.

Even the humble rain barrel made a comeback last summer in Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver's waterworks department sold them to conservation-minded residents and estimated that each barrel could save about 4,920 litres of water in peak summer months and reduce pressure for construction of a new dam with a $90-million price tag. In Toronto, planners want to use rain barrels to lighten the load on storm sewers.

Vancouver is hoping the rain barrels are as popular as its composting program started in 1990. At that time, the city subsidized backyard containers for composting household table scraps. In the program's first year, 250 compost bins were sold. Five years later, 15,500 households had them. According to the head of the city's solid waste management group, "It's the cheapest form of waste management we have."

And, there are signs that industrial composting is becoming big business. The Composting Council of Canada, an association of academics, governments, and businesses, says the $200-million composting industry was worth only about $10 million in 1991. There are 162 industrial composting sites across the country, about half of them built since 1991. Fifty of the facilities are privately owned, twice as many as four years ago.

One, in Corner Brook, New-foundland., Genesis Organic, started turning fish parts and wood bark into high-grade soil. In 1991, its sales were $120,000. By 1995, sales had increased to about $500,000.

Trans-Alta Utilities, a private Alberta power company, recently reached an agreement with the City of Edmonton. It will build a $71-million complex to compost 220,000 tonnes of domestic organic garbage and sewage sludge each year. The company will build the plant, and will then charge the city tipping fees to take the waste off its hands. The garbage will be turned into soil or soil conditioner and sold to farmers and nurseries. The City of Edmonton will share in some of the profits and be spared the political, financial, and environmental cost of building new sewage lagoons.

Canada Composting Inc. of Newmarket, Ont.plans to build a $22-million composting facility. It will produce soil as well as capture the methane gas produced in the composting process, it into electricity to make the plant self-sufficientinenergy. The company vice-president Paul Blanchard says there's close to 150 million tonnes of biodegradable waste produced in Canada and the U.S. each year, and most of it is still going to landfill.

Federal and provincial governments want Canada's waste stream cut by 50% by 2000. Canadians produced 6.2 million tonnes of domestic organic garbage in 1994, and 11% of it was industrially composted, up from 4.3% in 1993. Businesses, such as restaurants and packing plants, produced an additional six million tonnes of organic waste.

Recycling efforts are moving into the country's boardrooms too.

In 1990, Bell Canada replaced metal garbage cans with plastic recycling bins at one of its Toronto offices. It gave employees re-usable plastic coffee mugs and sponges to clean up spills. In the washrooms, electric hand dryers replaced paper towels. In the cafeteria, china, glass, and stainless steel replaced Styrofoam and plastic. Bulk dispensers of juice, milk, and condiments replaced packages and single servings. Food waste went into composters. After two years, the office had 97% less garbage, only 22 kilograms each day compared with 800 kilograms. The company put more than $50,000 into its Zero Waste program, but realized savings of almost $80,000 annually on janitorial labour, supplies, and disposal costs.

By 1992, a nationwide survey found that three out of five offices in Canada had waste reduction programs. Along with paper and aluminum can recycling, they included everything from two-sided photocopying, to buying in bulk, to recycling toner cartridges used in laser printers and fax machines.

And on the shop floor, General Motors in Oshawa, Ontario found a way to use scrap plastic that used to be dumped. Almost 32,000 kilograms a year, left over from making tall and backup lights, is turned into speaker covers that are sturdier and more economical.

Every day, the Autoplex in Oshawa had to dispose of about 130 tonnes of waste, 23 tonnes of clean production scrap, mostly from steel stampings, that can easily be recycled. The rest was basically garbage -- cardboard, wood, and plastic packaging from auto parts, pop cans, newsprint, and other kinds of paper. About 45 tonnes of it went into bales, bins, or bags to be reprocessed.

The program leaves employees with wood for their fireplaces but most of it goes into a waste energy boiler. Cafeteria scraps head to pig farmers; and part solvents and other production liquids are recycled.

Between 1990 and 1992, GM Canada reduced it shipments to landfill sites by 35%. Dumping fees provided the biggest incentive to act. GM paid $152.25 a tonne to dump its garbage in 1991, up from $18 in 1988. A tightening up on acceptable materials at landfill sites and the closing of some dumps added to the problem.

Aside from the financial considerations, many feel we're all morally obliged to reduce, reuse, and recycle. And while it's not without its problems, idea is catching on -- an extension of the Grocery Pro Manufacturers of Canada philosophy that companies need to exercise productstewardship," the notion that if you help create the waste, you should help dispose of it.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. The Body Shop, which sells skin- and hair-care products, started a program for, reusing bottles in nearly 100 stores across Canada in 1992. It's costly. The company pays out more in discounts than it saves by not having to buy as many bottles, and the refilling system bottles demanding of staff time but the retailer says: "It's the right thing to do and that's fundamentally why we have done it." Find other local retailers who have taken steps to address environmental waste concerns and outline their programs.

2. Check out your school's waste bins and do an inventory of what you find. Publicize the results throughout the school. Organize a campaign to cut down on waste if you don't already have one.