Sweep it to... London Drugs??

Today while cleaning out my brother-in-law's garage I ran into a classic consumer conundrum: What to do with old stuff (electronics, wood, furniture, etc.)? Staring at all of the household items, the thought of putting them all in the large red LORAAS garbage can behind me just didn't sit well. Why? I guess it was just the thought of them sitting in a landfill that really bothered me. Or even worse, being shipped back to its birthplace in China where it can leach toxins into poor peoples waterways (for more on this watch the short doc Exporting Harm—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSWGV3jGek). Some of the items in the garage that I really didn't want to see go to a landfill were an old bicycle, a microwave, three computers, two vacuums, and a fan. I immediately called Sarcan, Saskatchewan's recycling organization, which has the tag line, "Sweep it to Sarcan." I really appreciated the friendly service that I got over the phone from a guy named Dwayne. Unfortunately, they could only recycle the computers. When I asked him about some of the other items, he suggested that I go to London Drugs. London Drugs! Really! Since when did they take-in recycling?! I decided to look into it and here is what I found out:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Doing+good+good+business/8294264/story.html

This is a story entitled "London Drugs Emerald Award 2013: Doing good is good for business" that I found in the Edmonton Journal. It talks about an electronic recycling program that London Drugs got on board with that has the basic premise, "If we can sell it to you, then we should be able to recycle it for you." Makes sense. What impressed me was that one London Drugs store in Edmonton had a 93% diversion rate for waste which also included the organics from staff lunches! It makes me wonder what our product diversion rate for waste is here at our house and, most of all, why the City of Regina collects garbage once a week and recycling only once a fortnight (if you don't know what this term means ask a Brit).

London Drugs sends all of its recycling to GEEP (http://www.geepglobal.com/) which has six Canadian locations, two of which are in Alberta (I'm guessing this is where Sask recycling goes). GEEPs mission is to encourage consumers and businesses to reuse whenever possible, with a near zero landfill goal.

A couple of things come to mind as I mull over this: First of all, think of how ridiculous it is that most of our e-stuff comes from China, only so that through planned obsolescence (for more on this see this 3-min portion of a great short film called "The Story of Stuff" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2KLyYKJGk0), we can export it back to Chinese e-graveyards?! Like, are we really that inert that we would transfer our waste to dumps thousands of miles away? What is wrong with us? Sorry... Back to my point: I am happy to see that companies like LD recognize how stupid this is and are looking to, at the very least, break the e-waste export cycle.

Secondly, think of all of the jobs that opening these kinds of facilities in Canada creates! I just don't understand how anybody can see that the green shift and the economy are enemies? But then again, these are likely the same people who believe in the carbon spewing merry go around of cheap goods from producer to consumer and back to producer. Alas... I am venting again.

To wrap up, I would like to say how encouraged I was with LD taking the microwave, fan and computers. I also want to give props to Western Cycle in Regina, who took a piece of junk bike in as part of program in which they fix them up and donate them to marginalized people. I also want to thank the Hillbilly Vac Shack for taking in the two vacuums. And lastly, I would like to thank Rodney Sidloski down at Help International outside of Weyburn (http://www.help-international.com/). Rodney taught me a lot about the concept of zero-sum waste and how even the word "waste" is often a misnomer for "resource".

P.S. The London Drugs recycling program is called the Green Deal (http://greendeal.ca/)

One of the vacuums that was Made in China