Community Engagement

Happy New Year Green Beans, I hope everyone had an enjoyable,restful holiday season. Typically this is the time to make resoultions you know - I'm going to work out, I'm going to take up a new hobby. All decent intentions, but I think there is a road that is paved with good intentions.Having said that....I will try and lose 5 pounds.

As I progress into the New Year I am going to try and think about Jane Goodall's quote below before I make choices. It won't always be easy but it's certainly worth trying:

" I hope people will think about the consequences of the small choices they make every day. What do you buy? Did it harm the environment? If everybody makes ethical choices, we start mobing toward a better world."

The way I will try to do this is researching natural pptions before buying a product. An example would be I needed something to melt the ice on my wooden fron veranda and steps. I know that the chemical products can harm the wood, never mind the environment so the answer seems to be spraying with 2 parts vinegar, 1 part water, and a shot of dish detergent, I will try it today and hopefully it will work.

I am also going to get better at recycling, Here is a great example where I thought I was doing a good job and I wasn't. I have been doing some research and there is all this information about how easy it is to contaminate a load of recycables. It seems mainly items that aren't totally clean or might be wet could lead to creating mold. To get some clarity I input "plastic bags" in the solid waste wizzard (which is excellent) and it said to stuff all plastic grocery and retail bags into one bag then tie it up. So, I will do a much better job at cleaning and drying items before they go in the blue bin and tie up any loose bags.

Another example, put your cardboard pizza box in the green bin, even if it looks clean. It could have grease/food bits therefore it would contaminate the entire contents of a blue bag.

Check the wizzard on the Pictou County Solid Waste app if you in doubt about an item. Innocently putting containments in the recycling bin damage our environment. When a load of recycling has too muchcontamination, the entire loadis redirected to the landfill. This means that even the clean recycable materials in the load end up as garbage.

It takes commitment, but I hope you agree - it's worth it.