By Roszan Holmen - Saanich News - June 24, 2008
Trevor Smith, Councillor Vicki Sanders, Reverend Karen Dickey
and Glenys Verhulst pick the garbage at St. Aidan's United Church.
Parishioners of St. Aidan's United Church slipped on rubber gloves, boots and old clothes to dive into the dumpster last weekend.
"It's a horrible thing to think about doing but it's the only way to find out what's going wrong," said parishioner and Saanich councillor Vicki Sanders.
The church's green committee set out to conduct an audit on the waste generated from church events, rental groups and thrift shop.
"We just had to bring attitudes of curiosity to the garbage," said Glenys Verhulst, who organized the dive behind the church at 3703 St. Aidan's St.
The goal is to reduce waste and save money on the garbage collection fee, currently at $108 per month.
After sorting through all the bags on large plastic tarps on Saturday, the team found that only one small bag's worth of trash belonged in the dumpster.
"We discovered that 97 per cent of the kitchen waste could have been diverted from the landfill," said Sanders. "It was unbelievable the amount of paper towels and coffee grinds."
Already a group of volunteers take some plastics and styrofoam home to recycle or to the mobile recycling depots. To catch more waste, the church is considering hiring its garbage collector to take away recyclables.
The church is seeking volunteers to compost kitchen waste for its garden. It's also looking into energy-efficient light bulbs and installing another bike rack.
"We do pretty well ... but we have a lot of space to grow," said Verhulst.
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