Come one; come all to the compost giveaways around the city. Starting May 6^th, compost will be available at the Upper Ottawa Forestry Yard Monday to Friday between 8 am and 3 pm while supplies last.

Bring your own buckets, shovels and elbow grease. We’ll bring the compost.

From 8 am- 12 pm you will also be able to pick up compost at the following locations:

Saturday, May 4: Public Works Yard, 501 Shaver Road, Ancaster

Saturday, May 4: Public Works Yard, 161 Studholme Road, Hamilton

Saturday, May 11: Public Works Yard, 349 Jones Road, Stoney Creek

Saturday, May 11: Public Works Yard, 1301 Upper Ottawa Street, Hamilton

Saturday, May 18: Public Works Yard, 308 Rymal Road East, Hamilton

Saturday, May 18: Public Works Yard, 330 Wentworth Street N, Hamilton

Wow, this rain is coming down hard! It’s affecting the rivers, lawns, schools, and even our landfill. Fortunately, the City’s only open and operating landfill is equipped to handle this rainfall. When rain, melting snow or groundwater mixes with waste, leachate is produced and it needs to be treated before it’s released back into the environment. To keep the leachate from affecting groundwater, the landfill was sited in an area with dense clay that allows the liquids to stay inside the space. In addition to the clay lining, every year, all of the landfills are monitored to ensure that leachate and gas concentrations meet acceptable standards. One way we meet environmental standards is to monitor and manage the leachate. To clean the water, the site has a leachate collection system that pumps the liquid straight into the City’s wastewater treatment plant. The treatment plant cleans the liquid with the other sewage and the water can then be safely released.

Glanbrook Landfill

Saturday April 6

Highland Gardens Park (The Rez) 

• 9 am 
• Info: 905-525-8388. http://fb.me/249yDzp7A 

Saturday April 27

Victoria Park

• 10 am- 2 pm
• Info: strathconacommunitycouncil@gmail.com http://fb.me/NlZNWDTl 

Happy Monday everyone! You probably heard a lot about Earth Hour this past weekend. For those of you who don’t know about Earth Hour, it is a global event when millions of people turn off their lights and other non-essential electronics in their homes for one hour to show their concern for the environment. This year, Earth Hour was celebrated on March 23 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Earth Hour was started by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007 in Sydney, Australia and quickly became an annual international event. Earth Hour takes place in late March so that the sunset times are approximately the same in the northern and southern hemispheres due to the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes. This year, people from approximately 150 countries participated in Earth Hour!

In Hamilton on Saturday night, power usuage declined by 21 megawatts during Earth Hour. The city and Horizon Utilities teamed up to turn off lighting that isn’t necessary to public safety or essential services, such as corporate facility lighting and decorative downtown tree lighting. The City of Hamilton has been participating in Earth Hour since 2008.

It is important to realize that participating in Earth Hour by turning off your lights for one hour once a year isn’t enough to bring about positive environmental change! Instead, Earth Hour is meant to inspire people to change their lifestyles or daily activities in order to be more environmentally conscious.

South Korean students promote Earth Hour with an LED display

The city of Vancouver is an excellent example of how people committed to protecting the environment can make a huge difference. When Mayor Gregor Robertson took office in 2008, he made a commitment to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020. This year, the World Wildlife Fund named Vancouver the winner of its Earth Hour City Challenge! Vancouver was recognized because of the innovative action it has taken on climate change and for its dedication to creating a sustainable and vibrant urban environment for its citizens. Congratulations Vancouver on becoming “the 2013 Global Earth Hour Capital”!

In 2012, the team behind Earth Hour started the I Will If You Will campaign to challenge people to do something for the environment. You can visit www.youtube.com/earthhour  to see what environmental challenges have been created by members of your community and what the challengers will do if you complete their challenge! Encourage your classmates, friends and family members to participate in environmental challenges with you and achieve some pretty great environmental outcomes!

The Toronto skyline during Earth Hour

Leave us a comment with your Earth Hour stories and tips – we’re eager to hear how you spent your Earth Hour and how you plan to go “beyond the hour” this year to protect the planet!

For more info on Earth Hour, the Earth Hour City Challenge and the I Will If You Will challenge, visit: www.earthhour.org

I recently took a trip down to Key Largo, Florida, to escape this seemingly never-ending winter. I was very excited about this trip, curious to see a new city, and learn about the culture in this semi-tropical, North American, tourist area.

One of the first things I benefited from was the fresh local produce. I try my best to always buy local, and in the winter months, that can prove to be quite the difficult task. My meals end up being filled with potatoes, frozen veggies, and meat (since it can still be produced in Canada’s winters.) Being in Florida, it was nice to have fresh vegetables that weren’t shipped halfway across the globe. Another benefit was the mass amounts of seafood: lobster, mahi-mahi, conch, and even some small fish I caught myself! I’m not the biggest fan of seafood, but it was fresh and local; and that is something I’m a major fan of!

There was still a lot of waste in Florida, even though the food came from closer places. A lot of the food was still shipped in from various places of the world (traveling less distance than they would to Hamilton.) This created a lot of packaging that I needed to throw out. I was very happy to drive by a local municipal recycling depot, and ecstatic when I found out the cottage I was staying in had curbside recycling pickup! I was diligent in making sure all cardboard, metal, and plastic materials were put in the blue bin by the curb, rather than the garbage. Key Largo lets you put all recyclable material in one bin, unlike Hamilton, as their facilities are set up for this. We only had one blue bin, so we had to put some stuff in a cardboard box. They took it, box and all, since it was all recyclable material.

Florida Recycles

All in all, I was very impressed with the environmental standards that were in place in a tourism based market. I visited conservation areas, National Parks, and even toured a bird rescue sanctuary. It makes me very happy to see that we are starting to become more environmentally responsible all over the globe!

Written by Guest Blogger: Adam Lagrou