I spent the last two and a half months developing and
facilitating a section in the City of Calgary’s Healthy Yards Program. This
program is run once or twice a year through the Parks business unit and covers
three main sections that assist Calgarians to strive to have a “healthy yard”.
The three components are: Water Conservation, Composting, and Integrated Pest
Management. The participants in this
free program attend a two and a half hour session and receive a rain barrel and
a composter for their yards.
The goal of the program is to provide the resident with the
tools to create a yard that improves environmental sustainability, improve
diversity and preserve resources.
Money can be a barrier to participation. I am extremely
happy that the City offers free programming to allow anyone to attend these
sessions…so long as they sign up, as space is limited.
In one of my first posts, I mentioned how organic material
isn’t breaking down in the landfill, and how important composting is to the
success of waste diversion. Before I started working for Waste and Recycling
Services I didn’t really have any connection with my garbage. My parents and
grandparents composted and recycled so I grew up with that being normal. I
didn’t realize that organics weren’t breaking down in landfills, so I couldn’t
be the only one out there who was under this impression. My goal through the
Healthy Yards program is to have honest conversations with Calgarians to set
the record straight. If they choose to compost their food and yard waste in their
backyard composters, then they can reap the benefits of the organic recycling
they can do on their own! And most importantly all those valuable materials
stay out of the landfill.
The best part, in my opinion, other than the free program,
is the follow up that Parks does with the participants. They ask for photos of
the yard before and after, and also will visit the yards. This is incentive for
participants to work on making their yard a "healthy" one!
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