Vancouver Airport Authority has joined with other organizations and citizens across Canada to participate in National Waste Reduction Week, running October 15 – 21st, which encourages everyone to rethink, reduce, reuse and recycle by looking at your own waste reduction action.
Here at YVR, we’ve set up interactive displays and activities for employees, challenged them to bring litter-less lunches and set up battery and large electronic recycling collection stations for old batteries, TVs, computers, and other unwanted electronics.
But we don’t look at waste reduction only once a year. Vancouver Airport Authority oversees a series of on-going programs aimed to reduce waste and increase recycling by employees, airport tenants and passengers.
One of those programs came about when we realized that 90 per cent of YVR’s washroom waste was used paper towels! So in 2011, we started recycling all of those paper towels, a simple initiative that increased our overall terminal recycling rate from 37 per cent in 2010 to 40 per cent in 2011.
Recycling doesn’t just come from our collection bins located around the terminals, we also recycle our construction materials. In 2011, we reused or recycled 98 per cent of the 18,403,000 kilograms of construction waste generated from projects happening around the airport.
Learn more about sustainability and recycling programs at YVR on our website and visit the Waste Reduction Week website to register your own event and learn more about how you can help reduce waste.