 today about trash. More specifically, I know this is exciting, how to work with zero waste. So starting January 1st of this year, I committed myself 100% to trying to live zero waste. This is basically the only New Year's resolution I have ever kept. When I am not talking about trash, I work as the owner of the happy owner, I should say, of Brightspot Studio, which is my freelance graphic design firm. So I do brand identities and corporate websites for clients across North America. But my real passion, as of late, is trash. And so about six months ago, I started Tiny Trash Can, where I share simple ways to reduce waste. I'm the lucky mom of this kid, my zero waste kid, and I am the proud owner of Milo, my zero waste cat. So what is zero waste? Can you guys, I've been throwing this term out already a few times. Does anyone know what it is? Can anyone define it for me? What they think it means? Okay. Does anyone else have a guess? It's not that hard actually. That's an idea. You're gonna laugh. When I said I was gonna talk about trash, I meant it literally. It literally means trying not to throw anything away. So I don't know about you guys, but these work conferences are some of the most wasteful things that I as a freelancer encounter in my work activities, especially when there's food involved, right? So this year, we have about 400 attendees, actually more than that. Yeah, at WordCamp this year, I think 425 tickets were sold. So we have 400 attendees and we've all spent half of, roughly half of our waking hours yesterday and today here, so I'm gonna call that one day, right, over the course of the weekend. And Canadians on average throw away two kilograms of trash per day every day. So that adds up to a lot of trash. That means that this conference potentially throws away 800 kilograms of trash in just one weekend. That's nearly a metric ton. Just like kind of wrap your head around that. Now, I don't know if you realize this, but you guys have all been part of a little experiment this weekend. You've been my little guinea pigs. WordCamp has put into place a lot of green initiatives this year, an effort to reduce our waste as much as possible. Somebody's got two stamps. So if you were here last year or previous years, you may be familiar with what lunch used to look like. We had catered boxes that had a plastic tray inside with food. Then there was a bag and inside that bag was a paper napkin and three plastic utensils and a bunch of food you probably didn't even want to eat because you didn't get to pick what was in there. And this year, lunch looked like this. Isn't it? It's beautiful. I was super excited that we were able to pull this off. Real plates, real silverware, fabric tablecloths. I mean, didn't it feel like a super big upgrade? And then somebody cleared the table for me. I was like, are you done with that? I was like, well, in fact I am. I didn't even have to worry about figuring out what went in the compost bin and where to find trash. I mean, before you couldn't even put anything in the trash cans, they were overflowing. So before, after. Beautiful, right? And this wasn't hard. I mean, how have you guys felt about the greening of word camp this year? Has it been painful? Hopefully not too painful. So how do we move towards zero waste? Well, it turns out there are five steps, five very simple steps, and they all start with an R. So can anyone guess as to what some of these steps might be? Recycle, yes. Reuse. Ooh, refuse. Someone's an A student. Anybody else? Reduce, yep. So oftentimes we think of these three, right? I mean, we've been sort of, this has been drilled into our heads for decades now. Reduce, reuse, recycle. But when it comes to zero waste, there's two more that we add. We add refuse and we add rot, which is just another word for compost. And these need to be done in this order to make a difference. So you refuse what you don't need. You reduce the things that you do need as much as possible. You reuse what you have and you reuse what you can. Think secondhand. And then you recycle or compost the rest. Now, I don't know if you realize this. Not only is it something that's intended to be done step by step in a chronological order, it's actually a hierarchy. Now, what I've noticed is that so often our environmental efforts start here. We start with recycle, right? Oh, we want to be green. We're going to recycle more. Zero waste is actually about recycling less. If you notice, if you start with recycling, your impact, your potential beneficial impact is very limited. But if you start way up here, you have the potential to make some really big gains. That's because recycling, once an object has been created, it's been extracted, it's been made, it's been put into your hands, 95% of the environmental damage of that product has already occurred. So recycling isn't going to really save that much. What I realized is that there's something missing here, right? Unfortunately, not everything. It's impossible right now to live 100% zero waste, which is why I advocate for something called tiny trash. And hopefully after you've gone through this whole process, what's left is a very small amount. And that's the part that goes to landfill. To me, that's a very realistic way of thinking about zero waste at this place in time. So why is that the case? Well, we basically exist within a linear economy, right? We extract things, we make things, and then we dispose of them. Material goes in, trash comes out. A recycling economy is a little bit like this. We extract things, we make things, then we remake things, we make things, and eventually though, after some flips and somersaults, it ends up as trash anyway. What zero waste advocates for is a circular economy. In other words, there is no waste. No waste is created. What's created is reused for materials, and you kind of have this nice circular pattern. This is what you see in nature. There's no waste in nature, right? Everything is used for something else. So let's talk trash. The biggest problem that we have is that we are consuming way too much. Like I said before, the average Canadian produces two kilograms of trash per day. It's about 720 kilograms a year. That's a lot of trash, like three-fourths of a ton of trash per person. And cities don't make this any easier. In fact, they sort of almost incentivize it. The standard trash can is really big. I just moved a couple of years ago to a new city, and I had the option of purchasing either a 360-liter trash can or a petite 240-liter trash can. I opted for the smaller of the two, but still, it's gigantic. And what that does is that it normalizes consumption and it normalizes waste. You feel like, you know, this is kind of what's expected for me to throw away, and you don't think anything of it. You think I'm doing what everyone else is doing. Has anyone ever heard of Earth Overshoot Day? Yeah, I got the A student. Yes, can you tell me what Earth Overshoot Day is? We've over-consumed Earth's resources. Yeah, no, no, no, you're exactly right. So just to sort of summarize, Earth Overshoot Day, which just, we just passed. I hope none of you were celebrating August 1st this year because it's nothing to celebrate. It's the earliest that this date has ever fallen. So the people at the Global Footprint Network, they calculate Earth Overshoot Day every year. And what they do is they take Earth's biocapacity, right, how much the Earth can provide in one year in resources, as well as in absorbing some of the stuff that we do, and they divide it by human's demand on those resources. And it turns out in 2018, we would need 1.7 Earths to sustain current global consumption, hence August 1st. So basically, we're on borrowed time, right? And if you think that Canadians are good, we're not so good. In fact, we're among the worst. There's Canada right there, so I have if you can see that right here. If everybody in the world lives like a Canadian, Earth Overshoot Day would have been March 18. I don't know about you, I find that terrifying. It's sort of like if you had a $100,000 salary that you were given every year, and on March 18, you had just used it all up. In the first two and a half months of the year, you burned your salary, and the rest of the year, you're actually pilfering in your child's savings account. That's kind of what this is like. So where does our trash go, right? Landfills stink, literally and figuratively. So landfills do a few things that are all very terrible. One, they house a lot of hazardous waste, which then poisons soil and groundwater. They produce this toxic soup called leachate. It's the stuff that leaks out of the landfill when material in the landfill tries to decompose, and then rainwater kind of goes through it. And this toxic soup pollutes land, groundwater, and waterways. And then last but not least, we have methane. This is how landfills are connected to climate change. Greenhouse, I'm sorry, landfills create methane when organic materials, so stuff that could have been diverted to the compost pile but aren't, for example, food scraps, yard waste, things like that. When those go in the landfill, they try to decompose, but they can't because there's no oxygen. So they can't go through their normal decomposition process. So what happens instead is an anaerobic or no oxygen process and that creates methane. The problem with methane is that it's 25 to 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So we're speeding up global climate change when we put too many things in landfill. The other villain in this story is plastic. Have you guys heard about this plastic crisis? We're in the midst of a plastic crisis. I found out about this about a year or so ago, and my eyes were open. I was shocked. Some of you may have seen pictures like this. National Geographic just did this wonderful reportage, I guess, of plastic. And the problem with plastic is that it's very persistent, right? It doesn't go away. The most optimistic estimates are that plastic will degrade in four to 500 years. But the more realistic, pessimistic view says a thousand or more. And the truth is we don't really know because plastic hasn't been around that long. It's only been around for a handful of decades. These are all just guesses. But what scientists do know is that plastic doesn't biodegrade. In fact, all it does is break down into smaller and smaller pieces, but it's still plastic. Microplastics are in our oceans. Animals are ingesting them all the way from the very most basic animals, zooplankton, and it's working its way up the food chain. There's a picture that's missing here. Our picture. We are ingesting plastic. If any of you, I see lots of reusable water bottles. This is great. But if you have recently drank from a, recently drank from a plastic water bottle, 94% of those are contaminated with microplastics. If you like seafood, you're ingesting microplastics. And if you use salt, sea salt has been shown to be contaminated with microplastics. So the problem is we cannot recycle our way out of this problem. For one, plastics can only be recycled once, maybe twice at best. I don't know about you guys, but I used to think that like, oh, I'm going to throw this plastic water bottle in a recycling bin. It'll just magically pop out at the store as another water bottle, right? No harm done. Well, that is not the case. Plastic, like that come in water bottles, when you go through the, when plastic goes through a recycling process, it actually gets ruined. It kind of gets destroyed and it can no longer make the original item. So what happens is that plastic is often recycled plastic material. It's often mixed with other things like cotton or wood fibers to make decking or it's used to make clothing. And then those items aren't easily recyclable. So guess what? It ends up in the landfill or the ocean anyway. And this is the lucky plastic. Only 9% of plastic that's created ever gets recycled. That means the other plastic is either getting put in landfill or incinerated, which is not that great either because then it flutes the air. So what can you do about it? Right? It seems like, oh my God, this is so dire, but what can an individual do about it? Can I just have you guys like, if you brought a reusable water bottle, can you just raise your bottle, raise your hand? I mean, this is awesome. And you know, you probably, over the course of the weekend would have refilled it a couple of times. So just think about the number of water bottles that you just saved from going into ultimately the ocean. So let's take something, you know, the beloved daily coffee habit. You know, a lot of times we'll have a coffee on our way into work, maybe there's a coffee break, maybe you're meeting with a client, right? And so potentially you are using five disposable coffee cups a week. And let's say you're lucky enough to have two weeks vacation and you work for 40 years, right? You start this habit when you're 25, you retire at 65. One person then, oopsie, showing you that, could create 10,000 disposable coffee cups. Right now, 7 billion cups are distributed a year, disposable coffee cups. Less than 1% are ever recycled. The problem with these cups is that they're made with virgin, even though they're paper products, they're not made with recycled paper. Trees are cut down to make these cups because of contamination concerns. So very little recycled material is used in these cups. And then to make them waterproof, they're lined with plastic. Because they're lined with plastic, it makes it very, very hard if not impossible to recycle because you can't separate the plastic easily from the paper. So by replacing, by kind of cleaning up your coffee habit, one reusable mug, whether it's a to-go cup or a mug at your desk, that creates magical math and results in zero disposable cups at the end of your career. Pretty cool. So this is what I did. At my home, I decided to live zero waste. And that was my original trash can. It's a 10-gallon kitchen trash can. And over the course of weeks and months, I slowly started reducing my trash. And I did that. One of the first things I did was I looked in my trash can. Right before it was time to take it out to the curb, I took a look to see what was in there. And what I found is that 75 to 80 percent of it was related to food packaging. So it was stuff around produce, like the plastic wrap around a cucumber. It was the bag that my cheese came in. It was the bag that my tortillas came in, right? It was all this not easily recycled plastic packaging. So I decided that I would have to learn a new way of shopping. And so I looked for alternatives. So I found a zero waste grocery store. There are many of them in Montreal. They're popping up everywhere. This is Loco, Episerie, Loco and Verdun. And I also started going to Bulk Barn, which are everywhere. And both these places, I can use my own containers. So right away, I eliminated all the plastic packaging from my groceries. And this is what they look like now. And then I put systems in place to make this easier. I created what I call my bulk shopping kit. I put four mason jars in there. They're the same size. I know what the weight is, 460 grams in case you're interested. Don't have to worry about getting them weighed. I have my egg carton. I have contained like an olive oil. When I ran out of my store bought olive oil, I kept the container. I use that to refill. And I put this all in the back of my car because for me, Verdun is driving distance. I can't get there any other way because I live on the south shore. But I put this all in my car and that way I'm always prepared. If I ever have to run into a store, I know I have my grocery bags. I've got jars. If ever I'm at a restaurant and I forget to, I'm not able to eat all of my food and I needed to go bag, right? I'm only a short walk to the car to pick up a container and fill it up. So I never have to take single use plastic. I also learned a lot of really cool things along the way that you can buy literally anything in bulk, including wine. This is in Montreal. Super fun. There's tasting involved. I don't know why this keeps coming up anyway. So I'm going to talk to you today about how we can apply these zero waste principles to work waste. So first step, you got to know what you're throwing away, right? You have to look in your trash can see or in your office. What do you see the most in your trash? Can anyone tell me like what do they see in their trash at work? Yeah. Cups of like coffee cups as well as coffee cups. Okay. Yeah. Oh, the straw. Yes. Delivery boxes. Coffee stirs like the plastic ones. Is it like bags? Okay. So are you guys noticing a trend? So much of this is around food. So I, because I hadn't taken a survey before I started building this, I had to sort of guess at what some of these things might be. But once you brainstorm, I'm sorry, once you see what's in your trash, you can start brainstorming ways to eliminate and there's always an alternative. Plastic is relatively new invention. It's only been around about 60 years or something like that. There's a way to do it differently. So I assume that some of this waste in offices might be around coffee. So I know when I go and visit offices, so many times they have like a curing machine or an espresso machine, these pods are like awful. So, you know, seeing if you can switch to a regular coffee maker or switch to reusable k-cups, coffee makers can be found very easily secondhand. This doesn't have to be expensive. Providing secondhand coffee mugs in the kitchen for employees to use. If you've got a sink and you've got a coffee maker, chances are you have a way to like wash and these can all be bought at a thrift store. Somebody could just go and buy a dozen mugs and you'd be set. And then providing sugar and cream and bulk rather than individual packets, very similar to what wordpressed it this year. Another place that I think it can be wasteful are parties. And so throwing guilt-free parties for your colleagues on their birthdays or retirements, things like that, you know, instead of bringing in the disposable plates and silverware and cups, providing secondhand plates, cups and silverwares that people can use in a common area would be another way to remove and eliminate that sort of that waste stream, basically. So, my second tip is to replace your trash can. So, so often at work our trash is mostly like paper related, right? There's a lot of paper management involved at work. And so I find it surprising that oftentimes when you have like a cubicle or an office, you know, you have the requisite trash can. They give every employee a trash can. But what if that were recycling bin instead? Because so often we have it's so easy to throw it away because under your desk, but where's the recycling bin? It's like by the copying machine, it's in the mail room, you have to like go and trek over your recycling, right? We're making the environmentally friendly choices hard on ourselves and we're making trashing our planet super easy. It's like the default. So by simply replacing that trash can in your desk with the recycling and putting the trash can further away, it's going to make you so much more conscious of what you're throwing away and hopefully a tiny little bit guilty to make you change your ways. That's what I did at home. So that trash can over there on the left, I decided that that was going to be my new compost bin. Why? Because I had a compost bin on my counter. It was small. It got stinky really fast. I had to like empty it every two days into my backyard and come January, February, this is not necessarily fun to do. You have to put on your boots. You got to get on your heavy coat. You got to go outside. You get snow all over the house. I said, forget this. I'm turning that into my compost bin. So I have to empty it out a lot less. And I went and grabbed my waste basket for my bathroom and I decided that that was going to be my new trash can. Yeah. Well, I'm able to balance it better. So compost doesn't smell if there is a good balance of green and brown materials. So like nitrogen rich material and carbon rich material. So when it's a small bin, it fills up so fast with like, you know, you cut up a watermelon, the whole thing's full with like the rinds, right? Or banana peels. It fills up really fast and it's all the kind of like stinky stuff, the greens. But when I have a larger compost bin, I layer that whenever I have shredded, I put shredded paper in there. And so it doesn't actually smell because I'm able to keep a balance because it's, yeah, but it's so small that it fills up so fast. Like literally every day or two, I would have to take it out. So this just makes composting easier and makes throwing away trash. It just makes me a little bit more sensitive to it. So another tip I have is to go paperless. This saves trees, it saves postage, it saves time, right? And it's so much more convenient not just for you, but also your clients or coworkers and it's really professional. How many of you are freelancers? Okay, some of you. So I have started sending and signing contracts digitally. I always liked it when I was a was I was on boarded with a client and I could just sign my documents online and not have to print it out, sign it, mail it back, or photograph it back. This is just so much easier. So I use a WordPress plugin called WPE sign. I did a lot of research. This is the only one I could find that actually produces a legally binding contract that will hold up in court. It passes all its compliance, let's say it's like, I have all the initials, UETA, eSign and GDPR compliant. But I can create contract templates, work proposal templates, and I send these to clients and I can get my contract signed very quickly, paper-free. I also like to send my invoices digitally as well. I love fresh books. I'm an affiliate, but you know, I've been using them for years. I do all my time tracking everything through them. What's great is I don't spend a lot of time making the invoices. They kind of make themselves. It really takes just a few minutes. And what I love about them is that they have an agreement with PayPal. So I can get my invoices processed by PayPal for a 50 cent fee as opposed to a percentage of my invoice. And because some of my invoices are pretty hefty, having a 3% invoice fee tacked onto my invoice really cuts into my profit. So this is wonderful. I get paid so much faster because I have a PayPal button on my invoices. My record so far is six minutes from the time I hit send on my invoice to when I get paid. So tip number four, use both sides of every sheet. This is sort of like self-explanatory, right? We all know we should be doing like double-sided printing. Saves trees, saves money, reduces recycling. But another little like bonus tip if you want to like take it to the next level is rescuing paper that's one-sided printing. Ah, look at that we have. You're going to be in competition now for A plus status here. So what I do, inevitably you've messed up. You tried to print something. It's not what you wanted. Or you have files that you have to clean out at a certain time of the year. Just take the extra few seconds to look and see if the other side is blank. I just have like a little drawer at my desk where I put all this like one-sided paper that can be reused. And then when I need paper, I just go in there and I like to cut it out and half I find it's a more reasonable size. I put reusable of course binder clips and I have that next to my phone so that when I'm in my meetings I can easily take notes. I don't think I will ever have to buy another notebook again. There's always paper coming in that's one-sided whether it's junk mail, bills, whatever. So another tip I have for you is skip the business cards. And this pains me because I really love designing business cards. I do brand identities for clients. That's usually the first thing they want is like oh I can't wait to see my new business cards. And lately I've been saying well what if we did something else? Like what if I applied the branding to your website or I designed social media profiles and graphics for you. And they've been taking me up on that. So skipping the business card saves trees and reduces recycling. A lot of business cards actually aren't recyclable depending on the kinds of finishes are on them anyway. And it saves money to skip the printing. So these are my business cards and it took me years to come up with a business card design that I actually liked because I'm super picky about my own stuff. And I bought a box and I still have over half the box just sits there because I just don't have enough opportunities to give them out. And even when I do have opportunities to give them out nobody really takes them. You don't need them. In fact if you really want to stay in touch with somebody the best way is to exchange an email, to exchange a phone number, text them something, look them up on LinkedIn, stalk them on Facebook, right? These are essentially single use disposable paper things. You bring them home, they either clutter up your desk and eventually you're going to throw them away. I've had a few people offer me business cards this weekend. I don't know if any of them are here. But you'll know that I took pictures of your business cards. That's another thing. So if you don't want to be rude, I would say I would love to have a business card. Do you mind if I just take a picture of it so I can keep it? And then that way you can save it and give it to somebody else. So there's really like you don't have to be rude about this or like get on your high horse or anything. But these are simple things that you can refuse that make a difference in the long term. A lot of times you start a new job and it is super exciting to get like a business card with your title on it, right? But how many do they give you? It's like the minimum quantity is like 250 or something? Are you ever going to use those? So preemptively say you don't need to get me business cards. So tip number six, buy plastic free office supplies. This reduces plastic which is evil, reduces recycling and it reduces trash. So here are just some examples. I'm hoping we'll have enough time at the end so we can kind of brainstorm together scenarios that you guys run into. But instead of plastic pens, you know, refillable fountain pens, it's going to be really cool, old school and very luxurious. For pencils, opt for eraser free pencils, you know, have a separate eraser one that you can add. And that's because pencils are compostable. But if you have an eraser, then you've got the metal, you've got the eraser thing. So this just makes the end of life disposal of a product a lot easier. Instead of plastic highlighters, you can get a highlighter pencil. If you do a lot of like packing, shipping in your workplace, look for paper tape instead of plastic tape. And Amazon uses this. So you've probably seen the paper tape. What's great is that it can stay on the box and be recycled. Address labels. Instead of stickers, stickers are evil too because they also have a plastic backing. Instead of stickers, opt for a stamp, reusable. And don't affect the ability for the item that you're placing the sticker on of being recycled. Air pillows, you know, those things that they put in boxes, these bags of air. Instead, use shredded paper. I'm sure we all have exposure to that. Binders are usually cardboard. They're wrapped in plastic. Look for cardboard binders. These actually exist. You can buy them on Amazon. Or aluminum ones like metal binders. And these cardboard ones are cool. You can actually remove the spine so you can recycle the cardboard and then you can buy a replacement cover. When you do buy printer paper, look for paper that's ideally post-consumer waste recycled. Not just, you know, 100% recycled paper, but post-consumer waste. A lot of times they say it's recycled paper if they're just reusing their own business waste, but it never really went through the cycle. So it's better post-consumer waste and that it's packaged in paper. It sort of defeats the purpose if it's packaged in plastic. And if you're looking for anything else around the office, like this is just one example like a desk organizer, you know, you could repurpose glass jars that you have around the house. Let's say you buy pasta in a glass jar. You know, you take off the label and you use that to organize your pencils. I like organizing crafts this way because they're super visual. So this isn't exactly like landfill waste related. It's not zero waste in the classic term, but telecommute. How many of you guys work from home? Yeah, isn't it awesome? How many of you wish you could work from home? Right? Like could you? Like is your job something where it's technically feasible to work from home? I know they don't allow you, but is it a job where you could? That's the thing. And so what I would encourage you, I saw some like really amazing statistics. Like if everybody who could work from home worked from home one day a week, like that could be like the the starting point, worked one day a week. It would save so many gallons of gas and so many and so much pollution. Oh yeah. I mean, I mean, there's so much research to show that employers are so much more efficient when they don't have to spend that time in traffic. You come to work stress, you leave, you know, anxious. So yeah, work from home. I mean, so much, I mean, technology is allowing us to do this. And for the planet, I think we should try to do more of it. Maybe you could go at it from that angle. I started working from home, back when I worked in a newspaper actually, and most people would never think that you could work from home working for a newspaper, but it would be a deadline day. I was the person that was putting out the section, and I would be sick, but I'd be willing to work from home to get the stuff done if I knew that I could kind of like lounge around and bring pajamas and drink lots of Benadryl. And it worked, and they realized, oh, well, yeah, so it wasn't that big of a deal to start working from home more often. Whether you work from home or not, video conferencing is something that is great. It limits onsite meetings, and I think it also saves a lot of time. What I love about video conferencing is that you have to set an appointment so you don't have like these surprise meetings that come up that start chewing up a lot of your time. And you can limit onsite meetings with clients with video conferencing. I use Skype, Google Hangouts and FaceTime, because that's what my clients generally have access to one or more of those platforms. I've also tried some of these other things, and these are great. Go-to meetings, Zoom and WebEx are more robust video conferencing platforms. Yeah, they allow, let's say you work in the medical industry where you have to worry about HIPAA compliance, or you work with people in multiple cities that all have to call into a common number, or you need a transcript. Some of these other services might be more up your alley. Share office space. Montreal has some really amazing co-working spaces available. This reduces consumption, reduces utilities. So working from home is great, but let's say you can't work from home, maybe your roommates are really annoying, or you can't concentrate there, or it's just not conducive to work, you can consider a co-working space. These often have free Wi-Fi, you have access to printers, office supplies, so you don't need to buy any of this stuff. Furnishings, yes. No, they're usually subscription or membership-based, and if you want a private office or a private desk within that space, it costs more than if you just want to, yeah, I don't know, I don't know, yeah. So a lot of times they have free coffee, you also have the added benefit of community. A lot of these startup places, it's a great way to sort of incubate ideas, and if you become a member at one of these bigger office co-working spaces, they have a network of offices around Canada, so when you travel, you can use their services there as well. So here is just like some of the few co-working spaces that are in Montreal. I go to St-Chien, when I have to meet with like a developer on a project, it's right above Apicery Locos, and it's a zero-waste cafe and workspace, so that's great, but some of these other ones also are really nice. Tip number nine, so borrow and rents instead of buy, always think secondhand first, I think so often we go, oh, I don't have something, I need to buy it, that's our default, but what if we didn't, right? This is thanks to SiteLock, Adam at SiteLock, thank you. I've been wanting one of these forever, but I don't want to buy it, I've refrained from buying anything new, so by borrowing this, what was great is I had a really great conversation with somebody and I'm reusing. So here are just some of the things, occasional use items, I need this once or twice a year, so it's easier for me to borrow it, but there are so many things that we might not need on a regular basis that just make more sense financially and also consumption-wise to just borrow or rent, and then don't forget your lunch. Bringing your lunch to work, it reduces disposables, it reduces food waste, which is a big contributor to greenhouse gases, saves money and it's so much healthier for the most part. So anyway, this is a lunch that I packed for my kid. Packing leftovers from the night before is a great way to just clean out stuff in the fridge. Now if you like to go out to eat or you know you're going to meet somebody or you want to be able to accept an invitation at the last minute, I recommend putting a zero-waste kit in your office. Like today, just grab some utensils that maybe are like mismatched utensils you have around the house, Tupperware and a bottle and you just keep it at your desk. That way, if ever the boss asks you out for lunch, you're prepared. So anyway, I hope that this has given you some ideas and maybe even inspired you to start your own zero-waste journey. If you do, I'd love to see pictures of your trash cans. If you could tag them, hashtag Tiny Trash Can, I'd love to see the progress that you're making and cheer you on. If you want to learn more about zero-waste issues and other waste management issues, I recommend these things. Story of Stuff is like a 20-minute YouTube video that really explains sort of manufacturing process and circular economy stuff like that. Plastic Ocean gets into plastic from every angle imaginable, not just ocean. Trash is a great documentary. There's a Montreal Zero Waste Festival coming up in November where you could find out what's happening in our local community and, of course, follow Tiny Trash Can. So anyway, I hope what you take away from this talk, question everything, plastic sucks, make one change, just one change today and less is more. So if you want to get in touch with me for branding website stuff, go to Tiny Trash. I'm going to Brightspot Studio and if you want to talk to me about zero-waste consulting, anything like that, Tiny Trash Can. And my slides are at tinytrashcan.com zero-waste work. Do you guys have any questions? Yeah. My cat's name is Milo. How do I reduce his waste? So food, I, yeah, so I buy food that comes in recyclable packaging. Almost all food that I can find comes in a plastic bag. I went to the TerraCycle website, T-E-R-R-A Cycle. It's all one word. They have a lot of recycling programs for hard to recycle stuff and there's a couple different pet food companies, so if you have a cat or a dog, that take back their packaging for free for recycling and one of them is wellness. So I decided to go with them for the food. For what comes out the other end, I use a compostable litter that's called Yesterday's News. It's made with recycled newspaper. They make to turn into little pellets and then I compost it. So I created a separate area in the far, far end of my backyard, which is essentially I dug a hole and I dispose of his litter there and then I cover it up when it's kind of full and I let it compost, decompose naturally as opposed to putting it every week or every few days in a plastic bag, putting it into my trash in a plastic bag and taking it to the landfill. So that's how I do that. Any other questions? So this is awesome. So like the first question, everything, this is exactly like look it up. Like I'm surprised sometimes like is there residential composting in my area? So if it's not provided by the city, do you live in an apartment or a freestanding an apartment? You can compost in your own unit. It's called like worm, you can have a worm composting bin, which sounds kind of scary, but it's not. And you could look into that. I think it's called Verma, Verma compost. There's special ways to do that so that you can do it in your home. You might also look and see like if the apartment like the property manager would be willing to have a designated space on the property for compost that all the residents could contribute to. But there are services at, I don't know exactly where you live, but there are services if you looked it up where you could do it privately. You could have like a private composting service. I did that when I lived at a place that didn't have city recycling. And there was a private company, I know there's a private company that would take my recycling once a week. So I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way. I'm sure that it exists. It's just a matter of looking for it. And if you happen to know somebody who has a garden, they might be very happy to take your compost. Like you can store it in the freezer, like you can have like a bag or container in your freezer. It doesn't smell when you freeze it. And then you can take it to whomever who might use it and they could contribute it to their compost bin. So any other, yeah. So it's food scraps. And then I have a paper shutter in my office and I work from home. And so when my compost starts to get a little bit too wet and a little bit too, there's too much of an aroma. I go over to my paper shutter and I put the paper shredding in there. And the reason I do that is because paper, like shredded paper, is very difficult to recycle. You can't just like throw that in your blue bin. It makes a mess at the recycling plant. Like if you want to properly recycle shredded paper, it has to be like in a paper bag marked shredded paper so that they can pull it off the assembly line and recycle it properly. Yes. So most inks are vegetable based inks. These days. And so I'm hopeful that what I'm shredding is okay. I shred very little because I'm reusing the other side of the paper. And so it's only when the only parts that I shred now are the parts that actually have my name on it, right? Like the part that I'm concerned about for privacy reasons that have some sort of identifying information. I cut that part out and I shred that. The rest goes to recycling. And then what I do shred, I put it in my compost bin to kind of balance it out. Thank you. I think that's just a beautiful note to end on. So thank you very much. And if you guys want to hit me up with questions later, like if you have specific questions, maybe not work related, like home related, I'm happy to answer brainstorm with you guys. So thank you.