5 things you can do to watch your waste:

1. Don’t make garbage in the first place. Rethink purchases to consider lifespan, durability, recyclable content and packaging. Get reusable bottles, mugs and food ware – and use them.  If your restaurant claims food safety law prohibits refilling, print this letter from the Province of BC, which says reusable containers are permitted as long as safe food handling procedures are taken. And if they aren’t using safe food handling procedures, you don’t want to eat there anyway.
    Letter from the Ministry of BC -Reusable Foodware
2. Eat the blemished fruit and vegetables. The food thrown away in the United States and Europe alone is enough to feed the entire planet’s population three times over! 
3. Compost.
4. Repair what you have instead of replacing it. 
5. Use MetroVancouverRecycles.org to recycle beyond the blue box.
   

The Zero Waste Challenge has two goals. First to minimize the amount of waste generated through reduce, reuse and recycling. Second, waste that can not be reused or recycled will be used to its maximum benefit, through material and energy recovery.

Today, thanks to recycling and reusing, more than half (55%) of the 3.6 million tonnes of waste we create every year is kept out of the garbage.

Reduce- The BEST way to manage garbage is to not make in the first place.
Reuse- Reuse gives items new life. For example, new technology provides an excellent opportunity for reuse (cell phone, computers, televisions and more).
Recycle- Recycling has huge benefits (creates jobs and income, gives value to unwanted items) and is something we are good at in this region. Recycling alone can not be the final answer to our garbage problems. Recycling still uses resources and has hidden costs from collection, transport and processing.

The Zero Waste Challenge has a connection to the region’s solid waste planning process. It represents a step we are taking as a region to move towards making the least amount of garbage possible.
 Solid Waste and Recycling Planning webpage