Waste
It is important that we all change the way we look at waste, doing our best to divert as much waste from landfill as possible. Recently, our Green Team have been working hard to record the waste types in our sanctuary bins, to learn what types of waste we commonly have and how we can best manage its disposal.
Over an extensive data collection period, it was found that food and green waste (also known as organic waste), made up for more than 50% of our waste here at Lone Pine. Organic waste in landfill breaks down and creates methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
As a result of these findings, our Green Team has implemented a new waste management system at Lone Pine, first targeting sanctuary waste and that of our food outlets. All of our waste is sorted into four categories:
- Organic waste – food waste, animal waste, coffee grounds, and compostable packaging, compostable café serveware
- Co-mingled recycling – cans, glass, plastic bottles, Tetrapak cartons
- Paper and cardboard
- General waste – non-compostables, polystyrene, nappies and sanitary waste, chemicals, plastic bags
As a result of appropriately sorting our waste, all organic waste is now taken off-site to be turned in to a very useful resource; garden compost.
Our remaining general waste is managed by Veolia, who have a methane extraction system, capping landfill and extracting the methane to convert into power for households. This is a great solution for waste that is unable to be reused or recycled.