It’s Waste Reduction Week

Repair Monday

Repairing a broken item is a great way to save money, learn new skills, and support your local repair shops and tradespeople.

Facts & Stats

• There are over 58 officially registered repair cafés throughout Canada, including one in Ottawa! Check the map to find one—they would be happy to help you try to fix your things for free! Can’t find one near you? Consider hosting one yourself.
• Value retention processes like repair prevent 1.6 million tonnes of CO2-e from being emitted and avoids the extraction of 470,000 tonnes of raw materials.
• Repairing something instead of replacing it prevents the need for a new product to be made, preventing the creation of 80-95% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Textiles Tuesday raises awareness on the environmental consequences of clothing and textiles consumption and provides information on how you can extend the life of your clothing.

The way we currently produce clothing and textiles is linear: we take resources, make clothing, and then dispose of them. The materials used to make clothing are often not sustainable and have a large environmental impact. These clothes either do not last very long or are discarded after only a short period of time, after which the materials are mostly sent to landfill or incinerated.

Facts & Stats

• Thinking circular about our clothing and textiles has more benefits than you might realize!
• Canadians purchase an average of 70 new articles of clothing each year.
• The easiest thing we can do is increase the number of times we wear our clothes.
• By purchasing clothing made from reused and sustainable materials, we send a clear message to companies that sustainable textile production is important. If the demand is there, these practices will become more common.
• Washing clothes only when necessary, air-drying laundry when possible, and spot-cleaning can decrease wear and tear, extending the life of clothing while reducing the amount of microfibres entering waterways.
• Each year, people consume more than 80 billion pieces of new clothing, making the clothing industry one of the world’s biggest polluters.
• It takes 2,700 litres of water to make one new t-shirt.
• On average, we only wear 50% of our clothes – the rest sits unused in our closets.

It’s time for remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling economies to catch up. By thinking ahead at the product design phase, we can ensure our devices can be repaired, re-used, recycled or returned – keeping them out of landfill, and reducing the amount of materials we extract from the Earth.

Facts & Stats

• E-waste includes unwanted electronic equipment, such as smart devices and used cables, as well as batteries and fluorescent lights (including compact fluorescent lights). The materials that make up your electronics, such as steel, glass, copper, aluminum, plastics and precious metals, can be recovered and made into new products.
• Consider donating or selling your electronic devices instead of throwing them away. Disposing of them in the garbage, or storing them indefinitely, reflects the old habits of the linear economy (take-make-waste). To think circular, let’s repair, refurbish, and encourage businesses and manufacturers to take back devices for remanufacturing.
• E-waste is hazardous. Over time, electronics can leak toxic elements like mercury and lead, which are harmful to both the environment and human health. Disposing of device batteries in the garbage can cause fires at recycling facilities. Safely recycling electronics helps control these hazards and allows valuable materials—like recyclable plastics and even gold—to be reclaimed.

• It takes roughly 240 kilograms (530 pounds) of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms (48 pounds) of chemicals, and 5 tonnes of water to manufacture a brand-new computer.

Did you know some shampoo bottles, shoes, and other materials are being made from plastic waste recovered from oceans? You can now build a deck with recycled plastic lumber and buy boots made from recycled plastic water bottles.

Facts & Stats

• Simple changes in your everyday life can reduce your plastic footprint. Every action counts.
• Everyone has a role to play in reducing plastic waste and tackling plastic pollution: governments, companies, the recycling industry, and individuals.
• Approximately 40% of the plastic produced each year is for packaging, used once and discarded.
• Only 9% of the 3.2 million tonnes of plastic waste Canadians produce each year is recycled, according to a 2019 report based on 2016 data.
• An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year—that’s the equivalent of one garbage truck full of plastic every minute.
• By 2050, it’s estimated there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, by weight.
• Recycling 1 tonne of plastic can prevent up to 2 tonnes of carbon pollution.

Find out more information on the Plastic Action Centre website, an independent open-source repository that gathers information to educate, engage, and empower people to take action on reducing plastics. 

When you take the Food Waste Pledge, you’ll commit to learn about food waste in Canada and take action to reduce your food waste by:

• Planning meals and making a grocery list
• Storing fruits and vegetables properly so they last longer
• Getting creative with leftovers
• Thinking about expiry dates
• Compost leftover organics

Share your food waste reduction tips and encourage others to take the pledge on social media using the hashtag #CircularEconomyMonth.

Facts & Stats

• Across Canada, nearly 60% of all food produced is wasted—that’s 35.5 million tonnes of food waste, 32% of which is still edible. This results in a loss of $49.46 billion in value.
• Canada’s food waste contributes to 56.5 million tonnes of CO2-e annually.
• When organic waste is sent to landfills, it decomposes and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. However, composting food waste turns it into a valuable nutrient, while anaerobic digestion can capture methane to produce renewable natural gas.
• Redirecting edible food to food rescue organizations maintains its highest value and improves food security for those in need, such as children’s breakfast programs, community centres, drop-in centres, and shelters.
• One-fifth (19%) of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted each year. That’s one billion meals a day wasted, largely due to household food waste practices. Globally, this loss amounts to roughly CAD $1.35 trillion.

• In Canada, the most prominently wasted foods by weight are:
• Vegetables: 30%
• Fruit: 15%
• Leftovers: 13%
• Bread and Bakery: 9%
• Dairy and Eggs: 7%
• Every day in Canada we waste:
• 130,000 heads of lettuce
• 1,300,000 tomatoes
• 2,600,000 potatoes
• 650,000 loaves of bread
• 1,300,000 apples
• 640,000 bananas
• 1,000,000 cups of milk
• 470,000 eggs

By shifting to access over ownership (borrowing and lending instead of purchasing), you save money and reduce the demand for manufacturing new products. Consider this: how often would you use that drill over the next five years, and how much space would it take up in your home?

Choosing access over ownership puts the responsibility on manufacturers to create longer-lasting, more efficient products designed for repair and reuse. Millions of Canadians already participate in the sharing economy daily—whether through ride-sharing apps, libraries, rental services, or online streaming—often without realizing their contribution to the circular economy.