What waste management strategies exist in your community? Make sure that you know the rules you must follow in your local area for waste management and about any special programs that are in place such as yard waste collection, additional fees, or unique programs to divert waste.

On your next garbage day, check out how much waste is at each household and consider how effective the strategies that are in place, are at actually diverting landfill waste.

Now that you have proof of a positive action, it is time to find proof that businesses still have some work to do when it comes to encouraging sustainability. Be a detective yet again and find an example in your own community of a business that you feel does not encourage sustainability. Perhaps it’s an item you see in a grocery store that is contains unnecessary packaging or a restaurant that uses take out containers that aren’t recyclable. Snap a photo and provide a brief explanation of why you feel this isn’t a sustainable practice and suggest how you feel they could improve this situation.

The City of Toronto has produced an informative video about solid waste management in their city. Watch the video with a critical lens and take notes on what you think citizens of Ontario should know about our largest city’s waste management strategy.

If you were writing a blog post about the waste management practices of the City of Toronto, what would your headline be? Write a headline that you feels supports their practices and one that challenges them. 

Is it fair that Canadian communities ship their waste to other parts of the country or world? 

You have been chosen by your municipal government to design and lead a “Day of Sustainability” that will bring attention to issues of sustainability in your community. The goal of this day is to persuade people to adopt behaviours that reduce their personal impact on the environment. Lucky for you, the municipal government has provided you with a large budget which you can use to support your initiatives and activities.

You have organized a meeting with the municipal government so that you can share the itinerary of activities you have planned in order to achieve the goal you set out to accomplish. An itinerary is a plan of action that outlines how your day will be planned out. You will also need to provide an explanation as to why these activities are important because not all members of your municipal government will have the same depth of knowledge as you have when it comes to issues of sustainability.

Step 1:  Look around your community and see "where" you feel people are often making unsustainable environmental choices. Brainstorm a list of activities that you could implement during your “Day of Sustainability” to encourage people to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. For example, if you want people to stop using plastic straws, perhaps you have a lunch time giveaway of paper or reusable straws, or encourage them to drink directly from the pop can without a straw.  

Step 2:   After you have brainstormed a list of activities, research why they are needed and how they will encourage positive change. For example, your paper or reusable straw giveaway is needed because each year thousands of single-use straws are thrown out and will never decompose. These straws are adding to our landfills, as well as polluting our oceans.

Step 3:  Create an itinerary that you will show to your municipal government, an itinerary which will persuade them to support your “Day of Sustainability.”  You may wish to use Google Slides or another tool such as Piktochart, Canva, Haiku Deck, etc. to display your itinerary. You have been given a full day to run your events (9am-5pm, or longer if you wish) and you should explain how the activities of the day will unfold, as well as a description of why they are needed and how they will help encourage people to live a more sustainable life in the future.