Category Archives: Food Waste

We are producing power! ⚡

We began to generate and export power to the Ontario grid on April 1st and reached our 500 kW capacity for the first time on April 12th. We are now generating revenues from processing food waste into biogas and then generating power. With COVID-19 restrictions still in place, we are now planning to hold a virtual ribbon cutting ceremony in the summer. For now, here’s a sneak peak:

Inside the biogas plant digester, about 1,900 cubic meters of organic “waste” is being digested! The bubbles are the biogas coming up from the slurry.

ZooShare Bonds are Back!

– Earn 5% for 5 years or 5.5% for 15 years

This is our first bond offering since 2016. These bonds will be used to redeem and refinance maturing community bonds.
So far, we have sold $2.1M worth of bonds to current investors and people who signed up for our waiting list. Only 50% of bonds remain!
The Offering Statement will expire on June 30, 2021.

CLCK HERE TO INVEST NOW

You can also read our Investment FAQs here.

Welcome Rob, our new General Manager!

While our Founder and Executive Director, Daniel Bida, continues to be involved at a project level, our new Co-operative General Manager, Rob Grand, is taking over all of Daniel’s co-op related responsibilities: Rob will work with the Board to lead the co-op as we enter this next phase of operations.

About Rob: Rob Grand is an experienced entrepreneur and business manager with expertise creating, developing, and consulting with successful businesses, social enterprises, and non-profits in the Environmental and Renewable Energy sectors. Rob has served as a Director and Advisor to more than a dozen organizations including the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, Green Enterprise Toronto, The Coalition for a Green Economy, and the LFP Foundation. Outside of the office, Rob coaches hockey, teaches skiing, paddles whitewater, hikes trails, climbs rocks, and can often be found with camping gear strapped to his touring bike.

If you would like to introduce yourself to Rob and welcome him to the team, or if you have any questions, please send Rob an email: rob@zooshare.ca

Take a hike!

(Literally, in Rouge National Urban Park.)

Want to see the biogas plant in-person, from a safe distance? Check out the trail next to the Rouge Valley Conservation Centre (AKA Pearse House) at 1749 Meadowvale Road: There are 3 trails in Rouge National Urban Park, ranging from 1.5km to 3.5km, and the best view of the biogas plant is just a couple of minutes from the trail head! Please note that while we plan to offer supervised tours in the future, the biogas plant is an industrial site and members of the public are not allowed. Please stay on the trail. Click here for directions and parking information.

Above: Sights from the Rouge National Urban Park. Please share your photos of the trail and snaps of the biogas plant: #ZooShare and #rougeNUP.

Toronto 2066: The Future of Waste

Right now, we are facing a decision that will affect Toronto for the next 50 years. How will we deal with the city’s waste?

A future vision of Toronto. Credit: Flickr/Daniel Calero Jimenez 2014

Over the next 6 months, members of the public and city councillors alike will discuss and debate the fate of Toronto’s waste via the proposed Long Term Waste Management Strategy. At ZooShare, we firmly believe that there is no such thing as “waste”, only wasted resources. But how does a city like Toronto implement this philosophy into a 50-year plan?

Here to help kickstart our imagination is a new report by Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), “Zero Waste Toronto: A Vision For Our City“.

A Zero Waste future is “a future where there is no waste, where everything is designed to be reused or to become the materials and resources to create something new”.¹ As you know, at ZooShare we’ll be doing just that. There are other local examples too: Take our former contest partners Furniture Bank and/or Toronto Tool Library (read more about each of us in the report). We are all examples of local businesses participating in the circular economy, “where unwanted materials are not disposed in a landfill or incinerator, but…keep valuable resources circulating in the local economy, supporting good green jobs, benefitting the community and reducing harmful environmental impacts”.²

Credit: Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Toronto A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 7

But Toronto still has a ways to go. According to TEA’s report, a lot less could be going to landfills, especially organic waste (food, plant and yard waste). Despite the Green Bin and Yard Composing programmes, 182,000 tonnes of organics are still put in the garbage and sent to the landfill each year!⁴ This is why waste Education and Effective Communications is one of the priorities outlined in TEA’s report.

Credit: Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Toronto A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 15

Toronto is ready to take the next step towards a zero-waste future. As outlined in TEA’s report: “We have the programs and infrastructure to reduce, reuse and recycle almost all of our waste. We have an excited and robust group of businesses and communities ready to scale up with creative solutions that support a circular economy. Now is the time to continue our zero waste journey.”⁵

Hopefully, in 2066, Torontonians will be living in a zero-waste city. Make it happen. Do your part now.

Credits:

1 Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Strategy A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 03
2 Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Strategy A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 06
3 Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Strategy A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 16
4 Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Strategy A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 18
5 Toronto Environmental Alliance “Zero Waste Strategy A Vision for Our City” 2016 Page 24

Blog: Help to Crowdfund CaribShare

Hello ZooShare supporters,

I would like to share a letter with you from one of our friends, Carol Lue of CaribShare Biogas. Carol is a fellow-entrepreneur and biogas developer, located in Jamaica. Drawing inspiration from ZooShare’s business model, CaribShare will use biogas technology to produce renewable power, reduce poverty and take action on climate change. They have enough funds to cover 85% of the construction costs for their pilot project, but they need your help to raise the last $20,000. If you are inspired by Carol’s work, we urge you to support CaribShare’s crowdfunding campaign. Please read Carol’s letter below to learn more.

Thank you,

Daniel

Support CaribShare Biogas-HD from Carol Lue on Vimeo.

Dear ZooShare members,

Unexpected wins are one of the joys of being an entrepreneur.

I am the Founder and Executive Director of CaribShare Biogas, a social enterprise and registered charity in Jamaica. A few weeks ago, I was honoured to speak at a Virgin Unite event in NYC to celebrate the launch of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (there are 17, covering poverty, inequality and climate change). As CaribShare touches on several of these goals, this was indeed an unexpected win and an amazing highlight to share our story there. I was especially honoured to also share the platform with Sir Richard Branson himself who has inspired me and so many other entrepreneurs to use business as a force for social good. Our mission is to produce clean energy in a way that reduces poverty and allows us to take action on climate change.

In partnership with Ch4 Biogas in Ottawa, we are developing and operating the first biogas plant in Jamaica to generate electricity on a sustained basis. And, drawing inspiration from ZooShare’s business model and developing a partnership with ReGenerate Biogas, we are working with the hotel and small farming communities to deliver biogas solutions to the entire Caribbean region in a socially impactful way.

What We Do

We collect tremendous quantities of food waste from hotels and animal poo/manure from small livestock farms to produce biogas (type of biofuel) and organic fertilizer for sale.

The biogas is sold to businesses that are high energy users so they can self-generate electricity at a significantly lower cost than purchasing from the grid. And, the fertilizer is sold to farmers at a highly discounted rate to help lower their production cost and promote organic farming.

We then share up to 50% of our surplus revenues with our participating farmers as meaningful income to help support their livelihood and the vitality of their communities.

Our Current Project

Construction of our pilot 100 kW biogas plant in Montego Bay will be completed next month. It will process organic waste from the Sandals, RIU, Iberostar, and Half Moon Resorts as well as from 50+ small pig farms in the surrounding areas. The biogas will be used to generate electricity to help power a highly energy intensive sewage treatment facility.

My Path to Launching CaribShare

Bringing CaribShare along over the past 3 years to launching next month has been both extremely rewarding and challenging. Continuous ups and downs and incredible struggles have been faced: raising capital with limited collateral, negotiating the bureaucracy of getting our environmental permit approved, and negotiating both the seen and unseen political and competitive dynamics that come with developing a pioneering venture that is both a waste and energy company are just a few examples.

But despite these challenges, what has kept me going, beyond my confidence in CaribShare’s business model and my own personal resilience, is the clear vision that I have for CaribShare to grow and deliver clean energy in a socially impactful way across the Caribbean.

Growing up in rural Jamaica, I felt so blessed to be close to nature and to have that connection. But, I was also affected by the poverty that was around and the struggles that good hardworking people were facing. I also felt that it didn’t have to be so, and I was determined to help from then.

Fast forward many years later to 2012 after having left Jamaica to study and having worked in business and sustainability for about 15 years in Boston and Toronto, that opportunity arose. Having just been laid off and looking to begin the next chapter in my life, I entered the proposal for CaribShare into the IDEAS Energy Innovation Contest that was being sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank. And, out of 3000 proposals, CaribShare was one of the lucky 8 winners. And, as a result, I gladly moved back to Jamaica.

From the competition, I was awarded a $200K grant which I have been leveraging to raise $600K to launch CaribShare’s pilot thanks to funding assistance from Caricom Energy Program, GIZ (German Corporation for International Cooperation), and the Development Bank of Jamaica.

The Way Forward

Amazingly, our biogas plant will also be the first in Jamaica to generate electricity on a sustained basis, which is a significant contribution to solving the energy woes of Jamaica and the Caribbean. Plus, we will be diverting immense quantities of organic waste from landfills for clean energy generation and rural development. And, I can clearly see developing up to 6 of these centralized 100kW generating biodigesters in Jamaica before expanding to other Caribbean countries that also have a lot of hotel and farm waste.

But, this excitement to expand comes with sobriety in knowing that I am going against the odds in developing CaribShare from the ground up. Luckily, my supporters have remained committed despite my struggles and lengthy delays in launching the pilot because they too support the vision and see my persistence. And, through divine intervention, somehow I have been brought in touch with persons in crucial moments willing either to offer some meaningful intervention or to be truly collaborative. So, despite the never ending exhaustion that I feel as an entrepreneur, I have a tremendous amount of gratitude, optimism, and certainty in knowing that with the right connections, partnerships, and collaborations CaribShare will be unstoppable in improving people’s lives. And, yes together we can all make the Global Goals come true.

We have launched a crowdfund campaign to raise additional funds to successfully implement our pilot, which can be found here . To support our social impact, contribute to our fund, share our campaign link, and like our facebook page. Thank you for your support, and I would love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Carol Lue

Founder & Executive Director, CaribShare Biogas

Blog: What is “Food Rescue”?

food-rescue

In July, we had the pleasure of meeting some of our fellow food-waste innovators by participating in the Wast(ED): Food Education Speaker Series, a panel discussion initiated by the City of Toronto that featured local organizations exploring innovative ways to reduce, reuse and recycle food waste.

From left to right: Lori Nikkel of Second Harvest , Sue Arndt of Not Far from the Tree, Mike Nevin of FoodShare Toronto, Frances Darwin of ZooShare (not pictured: Helene St. Jaques of Informa Market Research). Photo Credit: Twitter @2ndHarvestTO July 9th 2015

An important distinction between ZooShare and the other panelists is that we will be dealing with a different type of “waste”. As you may know, we believe that “there is no such thing as waste, only wasted resources”, and in our case, the wasted resource is rotting food (which we will turn into power for the Ontario grid). In the case of the other panelists, their resource is food itself. Thankfully, organizations like the ones summarized below are able to “rescue” food before it rots, to feed people who need it.

Food rescue (also called food recovery) is therefore the practice of safely retrieving edible food that would otherwise go to waste, and distributing it to those in need. (The recovered food is edible, but cannot be sold.)

Food Rescue organizations and food-waste recycling organizations (like ZooShare) both play an important role in reducing waste in landfills and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Take a look at the Food Recovery Hierarchy (developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) to see where each organization fits: Food Rescue (“feed hungry people”) comes first, followed eventually by biogas production (an “industrial use” to generate energy):

Food-Recovery-Hierarchy-with-new-URL

One of the conclusions from the panel is that food recovery organizations have to collaborate to create awareness of and reduce food waste. On that note, read on to learn more about the local Food Rescue organizations that are making a difference right here in Toronto:

Second Harvest is the largest food rescue program in Canada. Since 1985, Second Harvest has picked up surplus, donated food from manufacturers, restaurants and caterers, and has delivered it to community agencies in Toronto who feed those in need. They have rescued 100 million pounds of food from being thrown out, preventing over 50 million pounds of greenhouse gas equivalents from entering our atmosphere.¹

Not Far from the Tree is Toronto’s very own fruit tree project, inspiring Torontonians to harvest, share, celebrate, and steward the bounty from our urban forest. When a homeowner can’t keep up with the abundant harvest produced by their tree, a team of volunteers is mobilized to pick their tree. The harvest is split three ways: 1/3 is offered to the homeowner, 1/3 is shared among the volunteers, and 1/3 is delivered by bicycle to local food banks, shelters, and community kitchens. It’s a win-win-win solution!

FoodShare is not a food rescue organization by definition…But their education programs may help save food in the future! FoodShare is a non-profit organization that works with communities and schools to deliver healthy food and hands-on education to teach students food skills, inspire healthy eating, and help people learn where food comes from. (Isn’t it true that if you grow your own food, you are less likely to waste it?)

YOU can be your own Food Rescue service: As we discussed in a previous blog, Canadians waste a staggering $31 billion in food every year, and as reported by Global News, “the biggest source of waste are households”.² Below are their suggestions for making sure you’re rescuing food, too…

yml_food-waste

PS If you really wanted to get into Food Rescue to feed yourself, you could become a “freegan” (aka a “dumpster diver”). The producers of the Just Eat It documentary (which you can watch for free here) were able to eat like kings by doing the same thing…And didn’t pay a cent for groceries in 6 months!

Blog: The smell of success – Ontario biogas tours show us how it’s done

Last week, the Biogas Association held its annual conference in Hamilton, Ontario, which included a full day of touring nearby biogas plants. The purpose of the tour was to continue the up-close and personal learning that has facilitated the growth in the industry we’ve experienced to date. The conference brings together people and companies from around Ontario, across Canada, and increasingly from the US and Europe as well. The tours are the highlight of the conference for me because they provide the opportunity to see different configurations and strategies for effectively and efficiently converting organic waste into energy and fertilizer. These are the biogas plants we toured:

Toronto’s Disco Rd. green bin processing facility

Eilers Farms – the first hog farm in Ontario with a biogas plant

The Hamilton Wastewater Treatment Plant

Bio-En’s commercial biogas plant in Elmira

Municipal biogas projects have different priorities and constraints compared to farm-based projects, which are also different compared to commercial projects like ours. These factors drive design decisions. Everyone working in the sector has a different approach to creating as much energy as possible while keeping capital and operating costs low. This includes different ways of processing waste (dry vs. wet), as well as different mixing systems and tank configurations. Each approach has its merits of course, so it brings the plant owner back to assessing what the primary goal of the facility is.

It is also important to remember that biogas plants are living systems, and just as living things tend to get sick if not properly cared for, a biogas plant is no different. This doesn’t just mean keeping the machine well oiled, but maintaining a healthy diet that doesn’t change greatly from day to day or week to week. While the odd piece of cake doesn’t hurt, like us, biogas plants won’t be too productive after gorging on certain foods. Just like us, biogas plants have to watch their intake of junk food–actual junk–like plastic, metal, glass, bones and sand. These materials could break the pumps and mixers that keep the big stomach going, while the bone fragments and sand (collectively known as grit) can settle on the digester floor, slowly reducing the digestion capacity over time.

$The light fraction of contaminants - plastic bags$

The light fraction of contaminants – plastic bags

$Grit and the heavy fraction of contaminants in Toronto's curbside organics$

Grit and the heavy fraction of contaminants in Toronto’s curbside organics

The biogas tours continue to show me how important it is to design care right into the plant itself. Recipe planning is essential, but also being flexible enough to handle shifts in the recipe. Purchasing sufficient pre-processing equipment to remove as much junk as possible is essential, but having a maintenance plan aimed at minimizing digester downtime is just as important. Without this care and attention to detail, plant performance will suffer, which means more downtime and ultimately reduced profitability.

Just like our bodies, biogas plants work best when the health of their digestive system is at its peak. Should we get sick, a few days off typically resolves the issue. This is where the analogy of a human stomach versus a biogas plant tends to diverge –- a biogas plant cannot take a few days off: Waste management companies and municipalities need somewhere to drop off their waste, because the waste never stops…They would have to deliver it somewhere else–probably less sustainable and more expensive. The biogas plant needs to run with minimal down-time, and to ensure this, it is equipped with multiple redundancies and tested on an ongoing basis, allowing it to be fed 24/7. This satisfies the needs of waste producers, waste haulers and ultimately the people of Ontario consuming the green energy.

All of these lessons have permeated ZooShare’s plans and designs over the years – our focus from the start has been to learn from what is being done around us as the industry grows and evolves. Our biogas plant is essentially a hybrid of the smaller farm-based systems and the larger commercial ones, giving us plenty of examples to draw from to ensure that our gut is healthy and the feeding never needs to stop.

Bonus! Learn what happens to Toronto’s Green Bin Waste

One of the stops on the biogas tour was at Toronto’s Disco Road Green Bin Processing Facility. As many of our members live and work in Toronto, we wanted to share the journey of these organics:

Once the trucks empty the green bin at the curb each week, the waste stream is taken to a transfer station, where all of it is transferred from the smaller trucks making the pick-ups to larger transport trucks. These larger trucks bring the organics to one of two digester projects located within the City, either to Disco Road (near the airport), or the Dufferin Transfer Station (located near Dufferin and the 401).

Upon arrival, the mixture of organics, plastic bags, diapers and everything else that ends up there begins the process by getting tipped onto a big concrete floor in a sealed building.

Toronto’s green bin waste begins its journey from waste to biogas

From here it is loaded onto conveyors by a front-end loader. It is then mixed into large receptacles known as hydro-pulpers, which are used to separate the organic portion from the plastics/metals/other portion. The light and heavy waste products, which collectively make up 19.5% of the total volume entering the facility, are separated here. The remaining mixture is then pumped into centrifuges, which are used to remove the grit (sand, broken glass, broken bones, etc) – collectively totalling another 1.5% of the total volume of material that enters the facility.

All the grit removed from the waste prior to digestion

All together, Disco Rd receives 300 metric tonnes of material per day. After the contaminants have all been removed, the material is then pumped into the digestion tanks, of which there are 2 with capacity of 5,300 m3 each. Digestion occurs over a period of 17/18 days, at which point the facility is left with biogas and digestate. The liquid digestate is reused in the process, while the solid digestate is loaded onto trucks to be taken to a compost facility north of the City for ‘finishing’. Unfortunately, the biogas is currently being flared (burned to neutralize its impact, but not used for energy), however, there are plans to begin generating power in 2017 that will be used to run the facility and adjacent public works yard. All of this is controlled by a computer system, which is monitored 24/7 both onsite and remotely via cell phones.

Blog: Member Spotlight: Don Ross

Don grew up in North Western Ontario where the outdoors was his playground; As a pilot, he witnessed the sky being used as a garbage dump; Last year, he and his wife Heather only threw out 3 bags of garbage.

When did you become passionate about the environment?

There isn’t a particular moment that I can say I became passionate about the environment, it’s been a part of my life since I was young. I grew up in North Western Ontario, the outdoors were my playground: Fly-fishing in the rivers, camping in the woods, playing in the snow…It gave me respect for the power of nature…And if anybody has ever gone winter camping in Canada…it certainly teaches you to respect the power of nature!

In high school one of the class projects was doing a documentary about what was important to you. Mine was an exposé about the pulp and paper mills that I grew up around in Fort William. I put it to music and tried to show how we were using the sky as a garbage dump, pumping all this pollution up into the sky. Not too long after I finished high school, I got my aviation licence: Flying around Thunder Bay, I saw a many factories and mills that reinforced my view that we were treating our air and atmosphere like a garbage dump. It made a very strong impact on me.

If I had to pick a particular moment when I became more involved as an adult, it would be around the turn of the century: Prince Edward County was going to be first County in Ontario to have wind-farms, and having lived there since 1980, we certainly knew we had a tremendous wind resource here! The people that were opposed to the wind farms were getting a lot more attention than those in favour, so I founded Citizens Advocating for Renewable Energy (CARE), which gave a voice to the silent majority who supported wind power.

In 2005 my wife Heather and I were some of the first in Ontario to receive the Renewable Energy Standard Offer [the predecessor to the Micro-fit program] in which people were given the opportunity to sell power to the grid. With Bullfrog Power we paid a small premium in order to source our energy from wind and small run-of-river (hydro) projects. We put solar panels on our roof and added more panels after the Micro-fit Program came in. Together, with the solar hot-water we added, it made us more conscious of the power we were consuming and how it was being produced.

Around that same time, An Inconvenient Truth came out, and that’s also when our 1st grandchild was born…That was my driving force from that point on…When you have grandchildren, that changes everything. I always visualize my grandchildren being my age, 60, what kind of world will we have for them? We have to do things that will make it a better world for them and for their parents.

Why did you decide to invest in ZooShare?

ZooShare fits with what we think is right. We feel like we have to set an example, and leading by example is the best way. I think it was Ghandi who said “be the change you want to see in the world”. If you want something to happen, it’s you who has to make it happen. Rather than just wishing things were different, make them different.

For us, ZooShare was a perfect way to get involved, we really love the idea of making use of waste products. Our society needs to manage our waste better, what better way than making clean electricity from it?

7% is a wonderful, very attractive return on our investment, so for people that are more focused on the financial benefits, you can make some green for yourself while producing green energy. For us it wasn’t as much about the return as much as it was about being a part of an innovative, creative and positive environmental project with high-visibility: We like that [the ZooShare biogas plant] will be in a public place (at the Zoo) where millions of people will see how energy is produced. It will trigger thoughts about how energy is made and consumed. Now, I don’t think energy production is something that most people think about, we all take it for granted.

We were also very attracted by the teaching element of ZooShare. I know we’ll be taking our grandkids to the Zoo again, and we’ll be able to point to the plant and say, “we helped to make that happen” and “we can make the world a better place”.

Finally, we were very impressed with the professionalism of the team and how our questions were answered. We had the good fortune of knowing Petra [who sits on the ZooShare board] and Daniel [ZooShare’s Executive Director] was wonderful in answering the questions we had. We would recommend to anybody that they get involved in ZooShare and buy bonds.

What are some conservation projects you think other ZooShare supporters would be interested in?

Water conservation is very important to us. I helped start County Sustainability Group. Every year we raise awareness about water conservation through the sale of rain barrels, which coincides with World Water Day. Rain barrels create an opportunity for people to think about where water comes from, and what an important, scarce, and rare resource water is and that we really need to treat it with respect. We use the proceeds from the sale of rain barrels towards a bursary for students in Prince Edward County who show an interest in studying environmental sustainability.

Heather and I have always been thrifty, not wasteful…One day, on garbage pick up day, we suddenly realized how many bags of garbage people were putting out…We couldn’t remember the last time we did that, so we decided to keep track…It was quite amazing: we only put out 6 bags for the whole year! So I wrote a column about that for the County Weekly News and challenged people to reduce their garbage by 50%. That year we reduced our own waste from 6 bags to 3. We do that by practicing ‘Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink’. ‘Refuse’ and ‘Rethink’ are the ‘silent Rs’: ‘Refuse’ is to be a smarter consumer: consuming less is the very first step. You have to decide between wants and needs. ‘Rethink’ is to think about everything you’re doing and try to find a better way to do it. It’s never being satisfied that you’re doing the best you can, because there’s always a way to do it better.

Another area that I think a lot of people could think about doing to take better care of the planet–and themselves– is gardening. When you think about our parents during the war, everybody had gardens, it was essential, there’s no reason why anybody who owns property could not have a garden of some size, shape or form. Since I’ve retired I’ve ben carving up my lawn and using more and more garden space and growing our own food. It’s better for you, and it’s an amazing way to keep yourself in good condition, you know where your food is coming from, and you reduce your carbon footprint (instead of buying food that is being transporting from everywhere around the world, you’re going out to your backyard). There’s instant gratification in having your own garden because you can pick it and cook it fresh right away. It also increases your own food security, knowing you can grow it and store it and have it there when you need it. You can also support your local organic growers and farmers, CSAs and community gardens, and advocate for bees and pollinators that are being devastated by neonics.

Gardening is also a great tool for the next generation. it’s a skill that kind of got lost after our grandparents, but when kids see it, they are amazingly interested in how things grow. There’s nothing better than taking my grandkids to the garden. In our generation, people have a consciousness of what we are leaving behind…it makes your decisions easier, it makes you think, “it’s not about me it’s the people who follow us”.

About ZooShare

The ZooShare biogas plant will recycle manure from the Toronto Zoo and food waste from Canada’s largest grocery chain into renewable power for the Ontario grid. This process will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of removing 2,100 cars from the road each year, and will return valuable nutrients to the soil in the form of a high-quality fertilizer. To build this project, we are selling bonds that earn a return of 7% each year for 7 years.

If you are a ZooShare member interested in being profiled for our Member Spotlight, please email Frances for details.

Blog: 3 ways to watch your “waste-line” in 2015

organicsCampaign

What a way to start 2015! On January 1st, Metro Vancouver made it illegal to dump food waste in landfills. Vancouver is leading the country by example: “We encourage food scraps recycling because it’s the right thing to do, it takes waste out of our landfills, it reduces our methane contributions, and it creates compost and bioenergy.” says the City of Vancouver website.

We’re excited to hear that Toronto is currently undertaking a long term waste management strategy for the next 30-50 years: “Development of the strategy will consider options which support waste reduction, re-use, recycling and recovery before final disposal,” says Annette Synowiec, Manager of Waste Management at the City of Toronto. You can learn more, share your thoughts, and get involved by clicking here.

In the meantime, it’s important to make sure that we each watch our own “waste-line” in 2015…And just to be clear, we’re not talking about shedding pounds or body sculpting! CBC recently reported that “more than $31 billion worth of food is wasted every year, and as tempting as it might be to blame waste on farms, supermarkets and restaurants, the reality is that most food waste is produced by you and me. Canadian households are accountable for almost 50% of that food waste:

Why? Well, you’re not the only one who buys fruits and veggies with the ‘best of intentions’ (which become mush at the back of your fridge). There is some “guilt relief” by putting that liquified spinach in the green bin, but let’s talk about ways we could prevent “veggie liquefaction” in the first place. Here are 3 ways to watch your “waste-line” in 2015:

1. Buy Less!

In the average Canadian household, one in four produce items gets thrown out¹. As the price of food continues to rise (35% in the last decade) wasted food starts to look more and more like wasted money–as it should. Are you part of a one or two person household? Do you have a Costco membership? Please don’t buy that 6-pack of romaine lettuce! Not only is fresh produce more expensive at Costco, but do you really need six heads of lettuce? Or a huge box or oranges? Yes, it might seem like a good deal, but it’s not if you’re throwing half of it away. “We didn’t renew our bulk shopping membership a couple of years ago,”says Annette Synowiec, Manager of Waste Management Planning at the City of Toronto. “I take stock of what I have in my pantry, and I’ve made a conscious effort to do small-scale grocery shopping…It saves me so much money.”

Be honest with yourself: Do I really have the time or appetite to eat all that food?

bigstock-Full-shopping-grocery-cart-in-50236352

2. Preserve!

So you’ve bought less food, but what do you do with it once it’s in your house? Yes, you eat it. But how do you make that food last longer? “By learning preserving techniques you can learn how to keep that food,” says Toronto’s Joel MacCharles, founder of wellpreserved.ca. In a compelling TED TALK about food preservation, Joel explains that “if you can boil water, you can preserve food.” An even easier technique includes using your fridge effectively. But if you’re not big on glass jars or fridge organization, perhaps paper sounds more appealing to you? Fenugreen FreshPaper helps your fruit and veggies last 2-4 times longer: Their paper is infused with a special blend of organic spices with anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. ZooShare supporters get 20% off FreshPaper by using the discount code SHAREFRESH at checkout.

3. Watch This!

“Just Eat It” is a documentary about food waste by Vancouver filmmakers Jen Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin. We had the privilege of watching this film at Hot Docs last year. Now it’s streaming for FREE online thanks to B.C.’s Knowledge Network. Watch it now!

Join us on Facebook and Twitter for more food-saving tips!

About ZooShare:
The ZooShare biogas plant will recycle manure from the Toronto Zoo and food waste from Canada’s largest grocery chain into renewable power for the Ontario grid. This process will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of removing 2,100 cars from the road each year, and will return valuable nutrients to the soil in the form of a high-quality fertilizer. To build this project, we are selling bonds that earn a return of 7% each year for 7 years.

REFERENCES

1. “Five Ways to End Food Waste” by David Suzuki’s Queen’s of Green
2. “27 Billion” Revisited: The Cost of Canada’s Annual Food Waste by Dr. Martin V. Gooch, Dr. Abdel Felfel and Caroline Glasbey. December 2014.