It’s the final week before Christmas and Hanukkah! Our favourite time of year, and also the busiest. We’ve dedicated a few links to the holiday season today as well as included a cool project featuring mermaids and plastic. Sound interesting? Read on for more!
After writing our article on decluttering your closet, we realized many of you might be in a predicament. You’ve successfully removed a bunch of clothing that you no longer need, but are now faced with the challenge of disposing of it. Do you throw it in one of our garbage bin rentals? Do you throw it in the garbage for collection curbside? The answer to both is no.
It’s surprising that even with the widespread adoption of recycling and donation programs that many people still aren’t taking advantage of them when they’re getting rid of clothing.
In fact, in North America, an astounding 85 percent of our clothing ends up in landfills. That’s over 10.5 million tons of clothing. The amount of textile waste Canada produces in a single year alone is enough to create a mountain three times the size of the Skydome (Roger’s centre) in Toronto.
The problem in the U.S. isn’t any better. Textiles in landfills are a major contributor to greenhouse gases. So much so that the EPA states that recycling all the U.S.’s textile waste would be equivalent to taking one million cars off the road!
One of the reasons clothing ends up in landfills is the lack of convenience. Even though recycling programs are so widespread, many people are still reluctant to look past their blue bins for recycling options. And finding a bin or location for clothing donations is sometimes just as inconvenient.
Because of this, we’ve decided to do the legwork for you and compile a comprehensive list of places where you can donate and recycle your clothing in Toronto and the GTA.
Happy Monday everyone! Well, maybe not so happy for many of us in Toronto, who had some back-breaking damp snow to shovel this morning. But hey, there’s nothing like a big snowfall to get us into the holiday spirit, so this week, our links are all about doing good and feeling good. And ridiculous $85 rocks wrapped in leather. Read on for more!
Can you believe it’s already December? Hope you all have started your holiday gift shopping to beat the rush! Here in Toronto, snow is falling, Christmas carols are playing, and toes are freezing. But elsewhere in the world, cooler things are happening.
We’ve written about garage organization, basement organization and kitchen decluttering. These areas are usually where our clutter accumulates the most but there’s another one that’s a favourite hiding place for junk; our closets. Like our garages and basements, our closets are typically a dumping ground for things that we don’t have a home for. It’s another way to temporarily cloak our addiction to stuff, especially clothing.
Moreover, because clothes are one of the hardest types of items to get rid of, you’re left with bulging closets that require you to wear safety equipment every time you open their door. In today’s market of fast fashion and competitive clothing markets, low quality, high quantity, discounted clothes have paved the way to closets full of clutter.
Buried in these closets is the roughly 20% of clothing that most people actually wear. The other 80% of items are never worn because they’re too old, don’t fit or still have tags because they looked good in-store or were a great deal.
If this sounds familiar and you’re tired of staring at a wall full of clothes thinking you have nothing to wear, it might be time to declutter your closet.
Happy Cyber Monday everyone. Hope you and your wallets survived Black Friday! We’ll jump right into this week’s links so you can jump right back into your online shopping.
Anyone who’s browsed through our site knows that we’re eco-friendly and promote thinking green, especially in the workplace. We encourage everyone to go green and pride ourselves on the fact that we ourselves make a significant impact diverting trash in our dumpster rentals from landfill every day.
But the workplace is, for most of us, where we spend only 30 percent of our lives. At the end of the day, we all return to our homes and families, where it’s even more important to go green. Unlike the workplace, we’re the only managers of our energy consumption, waste production and carbon footprint. We’re in sole control of being eco-friendly and going green.
Mushroom leather, Zero waste, and holiday shopping tips, just in time for Black Friday week. Read on for this week’s link love.
Readers of this blog know that we’re big fans of decluttering and organization, with articles on topics such as organizing your basement and beating back-to-school clutter.
Those articles mainly covered the how–with tips and tricks, the when–with timed decluttering sessions, and finally the why–your sanity, of course! It’s understandably challenging to take the first step in decluttering when the mountain of junk in your home is overwhelming. The only way to conquer any mountain, however, is always the same: by taking the first step.
So today we’re going to give you the last piece in the puzzle, the what. We’re firing off a list of 300+ things you can throw away so you can take the first step to conquering that mountain today.
What a crazy week! All of a sudden it’s a brave new world, with our neighbours down south voting in a new president.
Our first link will be dedicated to them, then, because hopefully for a moment they’ll unite behind a common goal tomorrow for America Recycles Day.
Thankfully, it’s business as usual here at City Waste Services and elsewhere in the world, where there are some cool things happening. Check out the rest of this week’s links for more.