The new year has arrived, and we hope everyone had a good holiday season. With new challenges and new energy and we will be working hard again this year to provide the best recycling and waste services to this little island.
I spend a little time in Hamburg, Germany this past month to celebrate my mother’s 80th Birthday. While I was there It was interesting to observe how recycling and waste is handled in this large European city. In the small apartment my mother lives she separates her plastics, paper, cardboard, glass and tin packaging and deposits some these materials in the appropriate waste containers in her apartment complex, others she deposits at collection sites close by. Her apartment building’s garbage and recycling waste containers are accessible 24/7 but she has to return batteries and other nasties during regular business hours of the participating collectors. There are recycling collections bins placed at intervals throughout the city for glass and paper/carboard or plastics that she uses.
There is a minimum 10 cent charge per shopping bag so many people in Hamburg carry a reusable bag with them. Germany is big on the Refundables idea. The average deposit paid on any drinking bottle including milk products is 20 cents and most everyone participates in getting their money back. My mother sure does. Batteries have to be brought to participating collections centres to be deposited. Often a batterie retailer will also be a collection centre for batteries. The same goes for paint, pesticides and other nasties.
It was interesting to see how the concept of recycling has developed in this part of this earth.
I want to that Annie Nagle for holding fort in my absence. As well I would like to thank Scott Hardy for creating a protective garden around our newly painted firefighting water tank. Our volunteer gardeners are exited can’t wait for spring to do their thing. Check it out the next time you are up at the depot.
A reminder that more volunteer hands are still needed in the Free Store and if you are interested in this fun volunteer job, our volunteers will be offering an orientation session early in the new year. They would like five to ten more people per week for on to four-hour shifts. For more info call 250 335 3229 or email nsnanua@yahoo.ca
We would like to thank all the volunteers who spent countless hours sorting at the free store, for no pay whatsoever, making the Free Store possible for the residents and visitors of Hornby Island; and a thank you to the “Recycling Committee” and the “HIRRA” executive for dedicating many volunteer hours to help run our little depot. And a big Thank you to all our staff for their commitment and hard work.
Thank You.
Leave a Reply