THUNDER BAY – Ben Cella says too much trash is sent to local landfills.
The youngster, a student at Thunder Bay’s St. Thomas Aquinas School, says he wants to play his part in helping cut down the amount of waste thrown out each week, adding students at the south-side school will do it one classroom at a time.
“If we reduce waste there will be less garbage going to the landfill. When garbage goes to the landfill, they have hills at the landfill and they could get bigger and spread through Thunder Bay. It kills our community,” Ben said on Monday, helping to kick off Waste Reduction Week in the city.
His class is playing a small part in the recycling effort.
“We’re going to use more containers than plastic bags,” he said.
Other classrooms planned to do things like reusing applesauce containers to hold paint for art class, converting egg cartons into art projects and bringing refillable water bottles to school instead of bottled water.
Eco Superior’s Shannon Costigan said schools are the perfect places to launch Waste Reduction Week.
“School is where children learn behaviours that last a lifetime,” she said. “If we can get them thinking about conserving and being mindful of the environment like this, those are behaviours that stay with them forever.”
This year’s Waste Reduction Week is focusing on single-use plastics, encouraging youngsters and adults to consider alternatives to keep them out of the garbage stream.
“We’re working on a variety of awareness projects to help eliminate the use of single-use plastics in people’s everyday lives and showing alternatives as to what can be done,” Costigan said.
As a whole, Thunder Bay has challenges when it comes to waste division, not the least the city’s isolation from other communities.
“But we are making improvements and small steps at a time. And there’s lots of things people can do on their own as well, like backyard composting,” Costigan said.
Additional activities this week include a film screening of A Plastic Ocean on Tuesday night, public tours of the solid waste and recycling facility on Wednesday, composting workshops on Thursday, a zero waste photo contest, recycling workshops and, in November, the great pumpkin compost collection.
For more information, visit www.ecosuperior.org/wrw.
