Introduction: The Importance of Waste Sorting
We all know that when it comes to sorting waste at home, it’s easy to think, “Eh, it’s not my problem, that’s what the municipalities are for, right?” But the truth is, we ALL have a role to play in keeping our planet clean and green!
The significance of waste sorting is its potential to enhance future recycling. This minimizes the waste ending up in landfills and negatively impacting the environment. Unsorted waste can release hazardous substances into the ground. It also releases harmful gases into the atmosphere, contributing to ozone layer depletion and other undesirable effects. Therefore, garbage sorting is crucial for reducing negative impacts on the environment.
Waste Sorting in Canada: The Three-bin System
We all know there is a three-bin system in Canada. The blue recycling cart, green food and yard waste cart, and black garbage cart work together and deal with most of the household waste in an affordable and responsible way. By separating out our waste, we can turn old materials into new products to save resources and protect valuable landfill space for future generations to use.
Proper Sorting at Home Matters
The proper sorting that we do at home makes a big difference. Let’s talk about what goes into which bin. Things that can’t be reused, recycled, or composted go into your black bin, and they end up in a landfill where it gets buried forever in the ground. Unfortunately, landfills are not the best place to put all our waste. Because landfills are expensive to operate and maintain. Today’s landfills have engineered systems in place to protect public health and the environment. These protective systems make sure the stuff that ends up in a landfill, stays in a landfill, and it doesn’t contaminate our land, air, and water. Our landfills are filling up, but we can control how fast this happens. We don’t want to bury resources that could be turned into new products.
The Impact of Green Bins

Using the green bin is a great way to reduce your impact on the environment. We should keep food scraps and yard waste from going to the landfill. Food scraps and yard waste don’t break down into soil, compost, or anything useful in a landfill because there is no oxygen. Worse yet, they create some nasty consequences like liquid leachate as the moisture from the food and yard waste oozes through the garbage picking up other contaminants. While the food and yard waste sit in the landfill, it also produces methane which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide when it comes to causing climate change.
Recycling for a Sustainable Feature
It is not just food scraps and yard waste that we need to keep from going to landfill. When you garbage paper, cardboard, glass, or plastic waste that resource is gone forever. The raw materials used and the energy it took to make that packaging or container are wasted. But by sorting materials properly into the blue cart, they can be recycled and reused in a circular economy, keeping materials in use for as long as possible. Just by recycling paper and cardboard in the blue cart program, we are saving over 1 million trees a year. Also, it takes 95% less energy to make new aluminum cans and tin foil from our used cans and foil than to make it from raw materials. The same goes for glass and plastic waste too.

Saving the Environment with Proper Sorting
By using blue, green, and black carts at home, we can save a generation’s worth of landfill space. Through reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting, we can make a positive difference today and for our future!
A Lighter Perspective on Waste Sorting
If you’re still thinking of complaining about sorting trash, reconsider. Residents of a small Japanese town have to sort waste into 34 different categories. Click to watch how seriously their residents take the concept of recycling.