Waste Education Community of Practice (CoP)
Meeting Minutes
Wednesday October 2nd
9:00am to 1:00pm
Fairmont Palliser
Oval Room (Main Floor)
133 9th Avenue SW
Calgary, T2P 2M3
9:00am-9:20am: Introductions
Attendees:
Neil Burkard (City of Edmonton)
Michelle Dias (City of Calgary)
Mike Dorion (Living Soil)
Ken Donnelly (Beyond Attitude Consulting)
Dustin Engel (AB Infrastructure and
Transportation)
Andrea Eitle (City of Calgary)
Kayley Fesko (City of Calgary)
Kimberly Fisher (City of Calgary)
Alexandria Fisher (Strathcona County)
Alla Guebler (City of Calgary)
Elspeth Holland (University of Waterloo
intern)
Laura Henderson (City of Edmonton)
Paul Lyons (City of Airdrie)
Lauren Maris (City of Red Deer)
David Merredew (City of Calgary)
Dzengo Mzengeza (Northern Environmental
Action Team)
Shawn Rojas (City of Calgary)
Tammi Rothery (Trace Associates)
Emily Schimdt (ABCRC)
Colin Smith (Green Event Services)
Deborah Wehnes (Calgary Board of
Education)
Elizabeth Romo-Rabago (University of
Calgary student)
9:20am-9:45am: ACEE CoP Update (Christina Pickles)
Christina provided an overview of the projects ACEE has been working on:
- Newsletters (for agency professionals and for teachers)
- ACEE Environmental Education Leadership Conference
- Leadership Clinic
- Online Resources
- AB Curriculum – raising awareness of upcoming changes
- Communities of Practice (CoP)
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Attendees split up into smaller groups to brainstorm how they visualize the Waste Education
CoP relates to each of the 5 principles guiding the CoPs:
1. Share: CoP members share resources, knowledge, and skills within the CoP and with others.
What do you have to share with others? How should we share?
- Sharing success stories
- Creating networks
- Event waste management planning: information to help event planners create and
implement strategies. Available on the web (soon).
- Would like educational resources that are easily presentable to audiences at events
(simple, easy to interpret, artful)
2. Celebrate: Program and CoP successes are shared and celebrated within the CoP and with
others. What do you want to celebrate in Waste Education? How should we celebrate these
successes?
- Party!
- Share ideas about community celebrations – mostly around waste reduction week
- Feedback from kids & teachers of program successes – tools to continue
- Celebrate successes of “waste-free events” (showing steps on how they got there so
others can see)
- Recognition: by awards, grants, feedback
- Give-aways: reusable bags, mini blue carts
3. Collaborate: COP members collaborate on programs & projects that advance the work of
their organizations and classrooms. Do you have a program that could benefit from
collaboration? Who would you like to connect with?
- Calgary <--> Edmonton <--> Red Deer
- Consistent messaging across province
- Establish priorities for collaboration
- Develop stronger community & business partnerships
- Consistent opportunity for schools to participate in waste reduction/diversion at school
- Buying market research together supports how we can change behaviour
- Food waste (ICI)
4. Influence: Ensure environmental education (waste) has a strong presence in the formal
education system. How can we do this as waste educators? How can we have the biggest
impact?
- Curriculum
- Experience based learning throughout K-12
- Biggest impact: applied learning
- Give teachers activities that are easy to run, fun/engaging and educational
- Educated ambassadors & experts
- Offer programs/PD days for teachers to encourage them to “care”
- Commitment from high level stakeholders
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5. Sustain: The CoP initiative becomes a long-term ACEE program with a sustainable funding
model. Any ideas on how we can do this?
- Membership fees with different rates for individuals
- Corporate sponsorship (offer benefits/incentive/involvement to sponsors)
- Possible funders: ATA benevolency fund, Enerken
- Municipal grants (Many benefits to large municipalities, just need to convince decision
makers the CoP is worthwhile)
- Track connections/successes/results to prove the need for a CoP to the municipalities
9:45am-10:25am: Sharing & Celebrating
Dave Merredew (City of Calgary):
- Dave explained how the recent public tours at the Shepard Landfill were a success due
to a partnership with Doors Open YYC. Doors Open promoted the tours through their
media outlets, which seemed to target a younger audience than would normally attend
the landfill tours. Overall, a great lesson learned that partnering with other
organizations can help raise interest and profile for events.
http://www.calgary.ca/General/Pages/Doors-Open-YYC/DOYYC---Shepard-Landfill.aspx
Emily Shmidt (Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation):
- Emily reviewed the new “love to recycle” website www.lovetorecycle.ca. The website
matches the ICI sector with a “compatible” hauling company that can pick up their
recyclable beverage containers. The website also has resources such as tips for starting
or improving a recycling program, grants for community infrastructure or schools and a
list of resources for educators. Another feature of the website is the impact calculator,
which provides the number of kg of GHG, kWh of energy and kg from landfill based on
the number of beverage containers recycled. Currently the impact calculator is based
on the average composition of beverage containers recycled annually in Alberta. The
ABCRC is hoping to improve the calculator further by allowing users to enter the
composition of beverage containers recycled (i.e. aluminum vs. plastic).
- A discussion followed regarding how schools/students may have a misconception that
recycling beverage containers is all there is to recycling. Schools might need to hire
separate haulers for recyclables and beverage containers, which leads to high costs due
to transportation. The CBE finds that the facility operators generally collect the
beverage containers themselves, rather than contracting a separate hauler.
Laura Henderson (City of Edmonton):
- Laura explained that a challenge in Edmonton is the difficulty of enforcing a 4 garbage
bag limit. They found that approximately 7% of residents were producing 6 or more
bags of garbage each week. In an effort to remedy this, they held a stakeholder meeting
with garbage collectors and found there wasn’t a clear protocol followed for high
volume garbage generators. They also surveyed some of the residents, but found these
residents thought they were doing a good job of recycling already. As well, the City
researched similar issues and solutions in other cities. Laura has reports detailing this
research for anyone interested in learning more.
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10:25am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-11:40am: Collaboration
Time was spent brainstorming ideas of projects members of the CoP could work together on
and these ideas were grouped into the following 3 main categories:
- School presentations: advertising/marketing to schools, social media, promotional materials
and educational resources, High schools - science of waste, RCA educational resources
- Best practices/standards for recycling centres in schools, businesses and events: bin types,
signage and consistent language (regional differences - food scraps vs. organics, compostable
vs. biodegradable certifications), Event toolkit/handbook.
- Interdisciplinary/community based waste education
-Other suggestion: partnership with the RCA committee to make systemic/infrastructural
changes
1. School Presentations:
- Some suggestions were made that we should have a waste education themed field trip
and presentations package (similar to the open minds program). For example, a number
of organizations could each provide their education program as part of a speaker series.
- This would promote a further buy-in from students and teachers – to encourage them
to reduce waste (might be a tie-in with Destination Conservation schools?)
- The ABCRC expressed limits on their capacity to provide classroom presentations, so
would like to know who to refer schools to if they can’t provide a program. Some
different tools brainstormed are the ACEE website, RCA speaker’s bureau and SERG.
- There is a need to provide more presentations to new immigrants and ESL groups (i.e.
Chinook Learning Centre, Centre for Newcomers)
- A plan was made to meet again in December to discuss how to develop an ESL speaker’s
series and ensure consistent messaging and language, but different topics for each
group’s presentations. In the meantime, the City will send out dates to watch their
current ESL presentation. This should provide some ideas on how we could move
forward.
2. Recycling Best Practices:
- Members of this group discussed differences in the acceptance of various materials for
recycling in comingled vs. sorted systems (i.e. coffee cups, cardboard, box board)
- Some materials that are consistent: trash, paper, cardboard, beverage containers.
- Municipal differences in consistency exist between rural, small town, city.
- Organics recycling practices in each city/municipality was catalogued:
o Airdrie: food & yard waste accepted as organics
o Edmonton: organics are mixed with garbage and separated at a facility
o Red Deer: pilot project in the works for the home
o Strathmore: residents need to drop off organics themselves
o St. Albert: curbside pickup
o Jasper/Banff: residents drop it off themselves
- AB government is working on a yard waste provincial program.
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The main outcome realized by this group was that there are huge inconsistencies in
recycling practices throughout the province (even in cardboard), so efforts to
standardize the language used are difficult.
A main question raised was who can suggest and implement the best practices?
3. Interdisciplinary/Community Based Social Marketing:
- This group took the opportunity to share information about reaching out to the
community with projects that promote change based on CBSM practices. Their
conversation also touched on the need for greater education of the ESL population
about waste diversion.
11:40am-12:00pm: Sustaining our CoP
Christina reviewed the online tools available for keeping in touch with members of the CoP and
continuing the interaction and support:
- Waste Education CoP webpage
- Google Group: sign up to receive emails of current events or articles, and take part in
online discussions
- Google Folder: upload resources
- Directory: sign in to view all of the CoP members
- Resource Centre: online searchable database for education programs.
Ideas for what the future of the Waste Education CoP will look like:
- Celebrating each other’s successes (more fun check-in & sharing events)
- Involve the RCA (for information, working partnership on best practices)
- Possible topics for focus group meetings: ESL waste education presentations, ICI
property management waste reduction
- It was suggested at the launch that CoP members were interested in attending a field
trip (possibly to Edmonton’s recycling centre).
- A guest speaker/educational event (possibly on CBSM)
12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch
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