Success Story - At Work
Mountain Equipment Co-op, City of Edmonton
Dumpster diving for hidden treasures is an activity that Edmonton’s Mountain Equipment Co-op has taken personally.
Already a community leader in environmentally friendly practices Mountain Equipment Co-op searches through the Edmonton’s location’s big dumpster at the back of their store to hunt down where the garbage is coming from.
“Employees have taken this action personally by volunteering for the dubious task, however they never volunteer twice,” said Karly Coleman, Mountain Equipment Co-op Sustainability Coordinator.
The dumpster dive is a bi-annual event is part of the store’s amazing goal to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill from the store by 90 per cent.
After sifting through and analyzing the garbage, Coleman said it became clear that the majority of it is coffee-related items came from the coffee chain attached to their store, items such as grounds, syrups, cups, hand protectors, and food. While most of it is recyclable and compostable, the store’s internal composting system just wasn’t large enough to handle that much of one item (coffee).
To solve the problem, Coleman approached the City of Edmonton to become part of the city’s pilot project for commercial composting. Five bins were placed around the building and are picked up by Inglis Environmental for transport to the City composting facility.
Coleman believes this latest effort will help her clinch her 90 per cent waste reduction milestone.
“I’m pretty happy about reaching that target,” she said.
