At a Parent Advisory Council meeting this week, I was asked to give parents an idea about how they could set up simple recycling and composting systems in their own homes.
So here goes: You should have at least four bins to make it easy on yourselves. The SLRD has created these handy sorting cards, that can be cut off to make labels for your bins.

I have a bin for paper and cardboard together, that gets separated on recycle day, a bin for mixed containers, a compost bin and a plastic bags bin.
Under the sink is a great place for what we call a "kitchen catcher" tote to put food scraps. My general rule of thumb for teaching little people about compost is " if you can put it in your mouth, you can put it in the compost" meaning any food we would eat, we can compost but not things we would not eat, for the most part.

That is a good starting point to start teaching children about recycling. So instead of saying "please put that in the garbage" you can say "please go put that in the recycling, it goes in the paper bin",etc. If children learn from a young age, that everything does not just go in the garbage, then maybe it will become routine eventually to think about where we put things.

While it is a great idea to integrate recycling and composting in every household, it is an even greater idea, to think about how these things got into our house in the first place. So, once you see how much plastic is being recycled, we can then think about how to reduce these single use items altogether. We do this by replacing them with reusable items. So, if it feels like hard work sorting recycling, then we can play a game to get rid of anything we throw out daily to any receptacle.
Here are a few solutions:
1. Use reusable items only
2. Use reusable shopping bags
3. Only cook enough food to eat and save leftovers
4. Reuse jars from the grocery store for storage.

Any students that would like to send in other possible solutions for reducing waste in any of their containers can ( with the help of a parent), write another solution on our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com "zero in on waste slrd".

Each person that enters will be put in to a draw for reusable containers and other fun prizes.
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