The Town of Battleford has declared Waste Reduction Week Oct. 18 to 24.
The announcement was made during regular council meeting, after the Town received correspondence from Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council, which is promoting the national effort to reduce waste.
Joanne Fedyk, executive director of SWRC, said this is the 10th year Waste Reduction Week will be celebrated in Canada.
"We want Waste Reduction Week to be a time where everybody adopts a new waste reduction strategy to implement, but at the same time, celebrate what you have been able to accomplish so far," said Fedyk.
Fedyk shared a success story from St. Angela School in Saskatoon, where the students calculated how much waste they had produced since the school was opened. The results were eye-opening, as the school found they had created enough waste to fill the entire school building. The students then put into place a waste reduction program and reduced their waste by 70 per cent.
Fedyk said SWRC's website (saskwastereduction.ca) offers many tips on reducing waste, from composting advice to where to send used water filters to be transformed into toothbrushes.
Composting is an important way to reduce waste, said Fedyk, as between 30 to 50 per cent of municipal waste is composed of organic, compostable material.
Not only can composting reduce the amount of waste produced by households, but there can be a financial benefit - a significant portion of municipal taxes is spent dumping garbage in the landfill.
Kevin Chaykowski, superintendent of public works and utilities, explained the Town pays $76 per tonne of waste dumped at the landfill.
"Composting basically saves on our tipping fees," said Chaykowski, "Instead of people putting grass in their garbage containers, we'd rather compost."
The Town of Battleford currently sells composting bins for $110, and, according to Chaykowski, they sell an average of 10 per month.
Although the City of North Battleford does not sell compost bins, the City does have five public composting bins set up for use between April and November at the following locations: the corner of 12th Avenue and 97th Street, the parking lot on 99th Street and 8th Avenue, the soccer field parking lot at Ross and Clements Drive, 942 - 107th St. and the parking lot on 104th Street and 19th Avenue.
There are also recycling bins for plastic, glass, paper and cardboard at both Frontier and Territorial Malls.
Mayor Ian Hamilton said the City has not declared Waste Reduction Week, although not because they don't agree, rather they haven't heard of WRW, nor have they received any correspondence from SWRC.
"We will certainly be looking into it," said Hamilton.
The mayor said he thinks WRW is a good idea and he tries to follow the three r's, reduce, reuse and recycle, at home.
"Sometimes we do forget about those first two r's," said Hamilton, adding his three grown children often encourage and remind him of what he can do.
Hamilton shared some of his strategies to reduce waste, such as distributing grass clippings around the yard instead of bagging and tossing them, separating recyclables and drinking tap water.
"We would like to keep more plastic out of the landfills," said Hamilton, adding the City takes pride on the quality of their drinking water and not buying bottled water can help the environment.
The mayor also talked about a pilot project the city is working on, where they have removed the communal bins in the alleyways east of 110th Street, replacing them with individual roll-out bins for each household.
"They don't encourage the dumping of items that probably shouldn't be going into our landfill," said Hamilton.
The pilot project began last October and it is anticipated more communal bins will be replaced with individual bins.
