Stephen Greenham, owner of Trafalgar’s Bistro, and Lorne Tyczenski, owner of Sweet Obsession Bakery, have jointly purchased a high end composter manufactured by GreenGood, at a cost of $25,000. Prior to their acquisition, any waste material they needed to discard would be placed in a residential dumpster provided by the City of Vancouver which would be emptied into a landfill three or four times a week at a monthly cost of $1,000. Instead of spending their money to have their waste going to the landfill, Tyczenski states, “…we are saving money and taking care of our own waste.”
The two business owners continue to sort out glass, metal and plastics inside their respective businesses and deposit paper and cardboard into recycling cans outside while everything else would go into the composter which is the size of a chest freezer. Each week the composter produces 240 kilograms of dark rich soil which is either used in staff members’ gardens or collected by Inner City Farms, a cooperative that farms peoples’ front and back yards for food. Tyczenski estimates that using the composter in conjunction with recycling eliminates 98 percent of their waste the rest of which, less than one bag of garbage between the two businesses, is placed at the curbside each week.
this is certainly a great initiative.
indeed it is. if people would think about spending money towards environmental products and services in the near term to help the environment regardless of when the money “investment” will be returned we will all be better off. for example, high efficiency furnaces that operate between 80-90 percent generally cost around $5,000 and have been stated to pay for themselves, in regards to our heating costs, within five years but there are many people who don’t want to switch because that is too long. but if we can afford to live more environmentally conscious, i would definitely encourage that .