Thanks to your support in 2020!

Happy Waste Reduction New Year!

341866875_a0e8c69f1e_mFor recyclers and environmentalists, Waste Reduction Week is like New Year’s. Its a time to reflect on the past year, and take account of successes and areas for improvement in our waste reduction efforts. It’s also a time to renew our commitment to a green evolution, and set new goals for the coming year.

At TWD, we have had many successes this last year.

We restructured our family business, embracing green economic principles, including a Corporate Social Responsibility pledge. This was a big investment, but also a worthy one.

We initiated an infrastructure upgrade that allowed for rapid growth, making it convenient for residents throughout Southern Ontario to dispose of their textile waste in a convenient and ecologically responsible way.

We upgraded our clothing donation bins to fire and tamper resistant steel. Then we took it a step further by helping a local steel manufacturer design a bin out of recycled material, that was lower cost than the standard import. We are proud to have brought that business home.

Thanks to the generosity of Ontario residents, we will have diverted 30 million pounds of textile waste and 2 million pounds of miscellaneous waste from landfills. This growth has enabled us to hire more full time staff, providing a boost for our local economy.

Diverting this waste has saved Southern Ontario municipalities (your tax dollars) approx $1,088,929 in tipping (dumping) fees.

We were able to do all this while raising funds for charity. With your help, so far in 2020, we have helped charities raise almost $75,000. That money has gone towards supporting local food banks, hospices, youth support programs, services for the elderly, and it even helped build a school in Uganda!

Thanks to you Ontario, it has been a great year!

Our commitment to you is to do even more in 2020.

Our Goals:

  • Implement green technology that will create a value added use for badly damaged textile waste creating a new market for the sector.
  • Sponsor a major media event raising awareness about the potential of textile recycling.
  • Support education programs and visit schools across the province sharing our knowledge about recycling, textiles and sustainable development.
  • Provide more bins so that community residents have easier access to our service and so that our charities can raise even more funds, to do even more good.
  • Increase our efforts to make our industry expertise available to law enforcement, educators, lawmakers and industry leaders.
  • Help corporations fundraise for charity through their own collection process.

Together, we are creating a community driven, green future!

Photo Credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via Compfight cc

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Packaging and trash

Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.

 

Save the trees

If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.

 

In the bin!

Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.

 

Kiss this!

An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

Packaging at the dump

About one-third of an average garbage dump is made up of packaging material!

Glass skyscrapers?

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!

Plastic bottles by the hour

Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!

The Sunday paper

To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.

The aluminum recycling loop

A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!

 

What gets recycled in Canada?

By weight, organics comprise the largest portion, accounting for 22% of recycled materials from all sources, followed by newsprint (17%) and cardboard and boxboard (17%).

Recycling by the Province

While on the rise overall, recycling varies quite widely from province to province. Ontario and Quebec recycle the largest quantities of materials, but the amounts of material recycled per person and the recycling rate are higher in Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

Canadian vs. American residential waste

Canadians produced 366 kg per person of residential waste in 2020; by 2020, this figure had increased to 418 kg per person. By way of comparison, residential waste production by our neighbours in the United States was 440 kg per person in 2020.

   

Canadian waste

In 2020, Canadian households produced 13.4 million tonnes of waste. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of this waste was sent for disposal, according to Statistics Canada’s 2020 Waste Management Survey, while the rest was recycled.

A great reason to recycle!

Landfills produce approximately 25% of Canada’s methane emissions (methane is a powerful greenhouse gas). Recycling, including textile recycling, can help reduce the amount of waste entering landfills and help conserve natural resources.

How much water do ice caps and glaciers hold?

The amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth, but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7%, is held in ice caps and glaciers.

How much recyclable material gets thrown away?

Paper is the number one recyclable material that we throw away. For every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, 35 pounds is paper. Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, 40 billion soft drink cans and bottles every year, and 38 billion plastic bags. Placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back hundreds of times.

 

How much household waste can be recycled?

Over 80% of typical household waste - including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles - can be recycled, reused, or composted.

How much carbon dioxide can a car emit?

On average, a car produces about 170g CO2 per kilometer. If your car travels 2020 kilometers per month, it produces about 340 kilograms CO2 - that's a lot of carbon dioxide!

How much harm can one styrofoam cup do?

A styrofoam cup contains one billion billion CFC molecules - a class of chemical compounds that deplete ozone. Once a CFC molecule reaches the ozone layer, it can take over 100 years before it breaks up and becomes harmless!

How many trees are cut down each year?

In 2020 statistics, primary forest area was reduced globally by 60,000 square km per year (about the size of Ireland). While it's impossible to get an exact count, at a rate of 50K to 100K trees per square km, this equates to 3 to 6 billion trees per year.

Worldwide Metals Production

Between 2020 and 2020, worldwide metals production grew sixfold, oil consumption eightfold, and natural gas consumption 14-fold. In total, 60 billion tons of resources are now extracted annually—about 50% more than just 30 years ago. Today the average European uses 43 kilograms of resources daily, and the average American uses 88 kilograms.