Lots of Cardboard
Oakville March 12th, 2008
The long process of packing has commenced. Our departure from Japan takes place on March 25th and naturally there are cardboard boxes everywhere in our living room. We are sending about 7 to 10 boxes to Canada via Nippon Express. Their services will cost us around $750 and it will take about a month for the boxes to arrive. It’s expensive, but we can’t bring all our stuff on the plane. I’m happy enough that Northwest Airlines is allowing me to bring my Mountain Bike on the plane. Although, I have to pay an extra $130.
Once all of those boxes arrive in Oakville and we empty them, I have to get rid of them. I was checking out some waste removal info, for garbage in Oakville, over at the Halton Region Waste Management site and I noticed that all cardboard boxes must be broken down, tied up and put next to your Blue Box. While on that site, I went through some of the other information and noticed that households are allowed to toss out a maximum of 6 bags of trash per week. They have weight requirments too and you can check that out here. There are many items that can’t be thrown out in the regular garbage pick-up and you can see those items under non-collectible material at the Halton Region website. Those non-collectible materials can be taken to the Halton Waste Management site located in Milton. Here is a map of the location. It is about a 20-minute drive from Downtown Oakville. On their website they have all the fees.
I know this post stinks, but I hope it was somewhat helpful.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
The waste management is about to change in Halton…which Oakville is a district of the Region of Halton…!! In a few weeks time all residence will be delivered a green bin - one to keep outside and one to have on your kitchen counter…well I will probably keep it under the counter. This green bin is to help you seperate out your garbage…you are going to put all sorts of compostable items in the green bin. The weekly waste collection will change once the green bin program commences. First they will only be picking up those 6 bags of garbage every 2 weeks…they will be picking up the green bin and the blue boxes every week. Already I find with the blue box program that I am totally overloaded by the time the second week roles around…as currently the blue box (recycling program) only gets picked up every other week…so now with the blue box and the green bin pick-up going weekly and the regular trash pick-up bi-weekly - hopefully we will begin to see a reduction in the amount that actually goes in the regular trash and subsequently into the landfill site will last us longer…!!!
I have to admit that we have only in the last year or so really gotten into recycling…I think it was because of the kids learning so much about it in school…anyway we literally put out less and less in the garbage every week…I can only imagine how much more we can reduce those bags when we are dividing out the compostable items.
I was at a friends cottage last summer and they don’t yet have a recycling program up there…and every time I threw a plastic bottle or a tin can into the trash…I got pangs of guilt…as I know there are solutions now for those products to be recycled and every little bit we can do to save the planet is a good thing…!!! Just my recycled two cents…!!!