Brush up on your recycling skills with this New West-specific program

You might feel like you’re a tiny piece of the equation while recycling your paper, cans, or food scraps, but one organization is working to demystify the system around the three Rs.

Emily McGill is the co-founder of Master Recycler Vancouver and is also putting together the second edition of Royal City Recycling Champions. The program involves a series of four workshops that dive into the issue of how to reduce and prevent waste. The program looks at garbage, recycling, and organics disposal. The program is free for New West residents and is funded in part by a grant from the city.

“Whether [people] live in a single-family residence, or a multi-unit strata, [they] have to deal with how they throw out their trash,” McGill tells New West Anchor. “And a lot of us carry a low-level kind of waste guilt, because we know that waste is an issue.” As part of the work that happens during the course, participants give testimonials to express how they feel when they see the repercussions of waste in the environment.

What is waste guilt/grief/anxiety?

• In waste grief/guilt/anxiety, we are more likely to see images of microplastics—McGill says one of the most common images might be the albatross with bottle caps in its stomach (warning: imagery may be disturbing for some readers) or a sea turtle with plastic drink can rings around its body.

While people might want to keep stuff out of the landfill, they may think their actions make little to no difference. That’s where Royal City Recycling Champions comes in.

“The goal of this course is to help people zoom out from their singular contact point with their waste into understanding the larger system, how it works globally, nationally, provincially, and then all the way down to the municipal level for New Westminster.”

McGill says it’s important for everyone to realize that small steps do make a difference. It’s normal for folks to wrestle with that, which is something that came up during the pandemic.

“During COVID…supply chains were disrupted, and we could no longer recycle glass and styrofoam. For several months there, it caused a lot of stress and strain for people, and it also [made] our waste a lot more visible.” Some of these situations can be amplified when you see or hear about certain statistics. “Like ‘only 7% of the plastics that actually get put in the bin are recycled,’ so there’s this sense of impotence, and there can be an apathy that sets in, like ‘what’s the point?’”

To help combat those feelings, participants of the workshop will look at the tangible actions they can take, participate in 20 hours of community outreach, and receive a certificate for their work.

“What we get to the bottom of is, what is the point of recycling, even if we know the recovery rates aren’t where we want them to be?”

There are still some spaces available, and anyone who’d like to sign up can do so at the group’s website.