Is it possible to live completely waste-free for a year?  Can we do it at home, in businesses and throughout the District of Sooke? Get inspired and explore the possibilities at Transition Sooke’s co-presentation of the acclaimed documentary The Clean Bin Project at next week’s Awareness Film Night, Wed. Jan. 14th at EMCS.

     Starting at 7 p.m., the evening will include a free store and displays in the EMCS lobby, the film itself and then a closing discussion featuring Sooke Mayor Maja Tait, Zero Waste Canada‘s Buddy Boyd and other guests. Our end goal is to sow the seeds and enlist volunteers for a Zero Waste Sooke committee that will take action in the months ahead.

     The ban on food scraps from the Hartland landfill (effective Jan. 1) is one good reason for the evening as residents explore the options for backyard composers and roadside pick-up. The night is also a follow-up to the November, 2013 AFN screening of the documentary Trashed and a lively “talking trash” discussion that ensued afterwards. One highlight of the evening was a call by resident Sheila Wallace for Sooke to commit to becoming a “zero waste” community.

     If you are thinking that Zero Waste sounds like a pie in the sky, know that over 400 communities in the world have committed to a zero waste process. According to a report in the Watershed Sentinel on the Zero Waste International Alliance Conference held in Nanaimo in October, speakers told of many success stories from Chilliwack to San Francisco to Salerno, Italy, (which went from 17% diversion to 70% in just 2 years) as well as presenting information about policies and ideas that are currently being implemented in cities and towns around the world to reduce waste.

     Mayor Tait will join the post-screening discussion to discuss the District’s current waste management strategies, including Corporate Carbon Neutrality and the Corporate Energy & Emissions Plan. She’ll be joined by Transition core team member Tony St. Pierre (from Sooke’s Cast Iron Farm) and such local business people as SeaFlora‘s Diane Bernard and Tugwell Creek‘s Bob Liptrot (both of whom have launched their own workplace waste reduction strategies).

          Another guest will be Zero Waste Canada‘s Buddy Boyd, co-founder of the Gibsons Recycling Depot (for a virtual tour of this award-winning site see www.gibsonsrecycling.ca).  We’ve also invited a representative from Pacific Mobile Depot, the plastic and styrofoam recycling operation that collects throwaways from across southern Vancouver Island and processes it locally in Sooke.

     Visit us at the Transition Sooke table to learn more about plastic waste and purchase some necessary tools for launching a personal waste-reduction regime, including reusable/washable produce and bulk bin bags for sale that have been made locally here in Sooke from recycled materials.