Our Waste Diversion Event for Earth Day & How to Host Your Own

To celebrate the 53rd annual Earth Day on April 22nd, Botanical PaperWorks took action on sustainability by holding a week-long waste diversion collection event.

More and more Canadians are concerned about how much waste they produce. In 2020, “Canadian businesses and households diverted almost 10 million tonnes of material from landfills, up by 4% (352 000 tonnes) from 2018.” (source)

At Botanical PaperWorks, we know that reducing waste in our landfills is important. Our products are designed to be zero waste and we have continued to find ways to reduce waste in our process, such as using our cutoffs as packaging box filler, and signing on with Compost Winnipeg for our organic waste. Our impact is always better together, so we asked all our staff to help us reduce even more waste by collecting items for responsible recycling drop-off at our 4R depot in Winnipeg.

Over the course of the week leading up to Earth Day, our staff brought in any items they had at home that were no longer usable, including scrap metal, hard plastics, old paints/aerosols, electronics, and art supplies. At the end, all the materials were weighed and recorded.

Botanical PaperWorks was able to divert a total of over 130 lbs from our landfill!

Electronics – total collected and diverted – 67.15 lbs
Scrap metal – total collected and diverted – 1.95 lbs
Paint & Aerosols: total collected and diverted – 50.85 lbs
Hard Plastics: total collected and diverted – 2.75 lbs
Art Supplies: total collected for donation – 7.8 lbs

How to host your own waste diversion event

If your business is looking to host a collection event of its own, we recommend having a plan to guarantee success.

A great place to start would be to meet with teams and managers to go over why you are doing this and where your business is at with its waste. Can you identify items that are used a lot by your company but frequently get thrown out? More often now, cities have a guide to where to divert items instead of throwing them into the landfill, which could be a great starting point for ideas. For example, Toronto has the TOwaste app or Edmonton has the WasteWise app connected to their Eco Stations.

Once you have decided what you want to collect, share the word with your team. Get everyone involved in the process. Sometimes a fun incentive or competition for who can collect the most can really increase the event’s success.

Afterward, make sure to collect results. Gathering and sharing results with staff and the public helps bring awareness to the great work your company is doing and can help your staff feel they’ve made a difference in the company.   

Happy Earth Day!