With the holiday season comes a lot of waste. From wrapping paper to disposable plates and cutlery, it’s easy to generate a lot of garbage during this festive time. How do you properly sort all of this excess waste?
The City of Winnipeg has partnered with Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba to bring you the Recyclepedia – The Recyclepedia is a search tool and mobile app that helps you learn where the items you wish to dispose of should go – be it your blue bin, a 4R Winnipeg Depot, a local charity, or your garbage can.
Here are a few of those common holiday items that can be tough to sort and how you can dispose of them properly;
Christmas Trees: are not accepted in the regular recycling or garbage stream. Bring Christmas trees to a Let’s Chip In Depot or 4R Winnipeg Depot, where they will be turned into mulch. Wood chip mulch is free of charge, while quantities last, at all Let’s Chip In depots.
Christmas Lights: are not accepted in the regular recycling stream. If they’re still in working order, donate them. Or drop off broken lights at Urban Mine for recycling.
Wrapping Paper: is not accepted in your blue bin for recycling. The dyes used are too difficult to separate from the paper, making it inefficient to recycle. Try wrapping your gifts in recyclable materials, such as craft paper, newspaper or cloth. You can also put your gifts in reusable bags they can reuse for later.
Plastic Cutlery: is not recyclable and goes in the garbage. Choose re-usable cutlery instead.
Metal Cookie/Food Tins: are accepted in residential recycling. Make sure containers are empty.
Paper Napkins and Paper Towels: can be added to your compost bin.
Here at FortWhyte, we’ve been working hard to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill. In 2017, we partnered with Compost Winnipeg, a commercial composting company, to divert our organic material. Collection through Compost Winnipeg is special as they accept materials which aren’t well suited for backyard composting including meat, dairy and compostable containers.
Compost bins are located at our Buffalo Stone Café as well as inside all public buildings and paper towel collection is located in all bathrooms. We’re excited to share that in the last five years, we’ve diverted an impressive 25,010 kgs of organics!
Want to reduce your household waste but don’t have a space for backyard composting? Compost Winnipeg also provides residential service.
Thank you for helping make the world a cleaner, greener place.
Interested in learning more about our sustainability initiatives? Check out our Stories of Sustainability.