Can you believe that the first official day of spring is just days away? It’s true! March 20^th is the first day of spring. For most people, it also means it is a great time for preparing for all the yard work that will need to be done.

Each spring, around Ottawa and all of Canada, people prepare for the months that lie ahead. It is the perfect time to start planning what yard work needs to be done, what will be planted, and where you will plant it all. While you are at it, you will probably have some yard waste, such as branches, bushes or other items that didn’t survive the winter. It is also a great time to clean out the garage and get rid of all you have been storing up all winter.

So what do you do with all that yard waste? You gather it up and prepare for the upcoming yard waste collection through the City of Ottawa. The next pick-up date will be April 26^th to the 30^th. Just remember that everything needs to be in compostable yard waste bags, no plastic bags (as they do not biodegrade).

While …

If you are like most Canadians, you are lugging at least a bag or two of garbage out to the curb each week. And you probably don’t give much thought as to what goes into those garbage bags, right? But you should! Because what goes in them may disappear from your curb, but many of them will outlive you (and future generations) in a landfill!

Did you know that a glass bottle takes about one million years to decompose? It’s true! But that’s not all, take a look around your kitchen at the many number of things you routinely put into the trash, rather than the recycle bin. A tin can from vegetables will take 80 to 100 years to decompose, while an aluminum soda can will take anywhere from 200 to 500 years! The plastic 6-pack ring from soda takes about 450 years to decompose.  Oh, and the Styrofoam cup? They don’t even know how long it takes to decompose; many researchers believe it never does!

So now you can begin to see the problem. If you take every person in the Ottawa area, or even Canada, who throws out just one of those items per day or week, …