The City of Laval, Que., together with the regional environmental council of Laval is difficult 25 families to scale back their household waste, over a six-month period. The beginning of November was the second time participants needed to weigh their compost, recycling and garbage production.
When resident Christine Persechino saw the number on her scale while weighing her garbage bag, she cheered. Over the past two months Persechino and her husband have reduced their household waste by over 5.5 kilos.
“Before I entered this project of recycling, we might fill in two and a half full garbage bags every week,” Persechino told Global News.
While watching their grandchildren throughout the pandemic, the retired couple said they craved a life-style change and decided to enter the challenge.
“We needed to stop and reflect on our actions and decisions and see what we could do to make it higher because we do have the desire to make a change for the long run generations and we love this planet,” said Persechino.
Participants track the burden of their compost, recycling and garbage 3 times over six months. It’s a part of town’s larger waste management strategy.
Laval goals to be zero waste by 2035.
“We hope that we’ll find a way to discover possibly some small, easy behaviour that may be adopt by many more families in Laval,” said Laval’s head of residual materials management division, Philippe Vaillancourt.
Families aren’t expected to completely erase their waste. Laval’s goal is have them reduce it by 25 per cent. Participants are also given workshops and conferences to assist them reach the goal.
Persechino says the goal is manageable by changing bad habits.
“I cooked rather a lot, way an excessive amount of and we’d lose it within the fridge or I might serve too many big portions and again it will be thrown in the rubbish,” she said.
The grandma is now sticking to a grocery list and repurposing what she used to throw out.
“I do have this one plastic bag wrap wherein the bread is wrapped that I’ll keep for after I return the youngsters home with dirty socks, for instance,” said Persechino.
The participant hopes by putting more thought into what goes within the bin, will create even less waste by the top of the challenge.
