Each month in Tofino, a group of people meet for a ‘Green Breakfast’. During the breakfast a discussion takes place concerning environmental issues and how to address them, whilst laying out a plan to better the communities green initiatives.

Being new to the community I have only just discovered this group and upon finding out that today’s meeting would cover composting, I decided to attend.

I am a very keen recycler and following my discovery of the clean bin project, have been very keen to reduce waste in all areas. Composting in Tofino has its challenges, the main one being, at least for me, the potential attraction of bears.
The meeting was extremely beneficial and it was inspiring to see so many important community figures in attendance, such as Chris Bird from Sonbird Recycling, council members, sustainability gurus and team leaders in the field of composting.
With limited landfill for Tofino, the aim of the meeting was to discuss the potential for a community composting procedure. We covered logistics such as individual composting, street pick up, voluntary drop off, types of composting and use and demand of the end soil product.
A local resident Louise Rodgers has been running a composting test over on Industrial Way since November, using food scraps from local restaurant Shelter and Tofino Brew Co. with success. She wants to push this project a little further and extend it to a potential twenty families and is in need of volunteers, support and funding.

Tofino isnt as good at recycling as we might think, with Uclulet being a stronger candidate for recycling prowess, at least according to Sonbirds pick-up statistics. Therefore I feel the same could be true for composting. This is why we need to make it as easy as possible for the community to compost.

I would be very interested to hear from people in the community, in the below comments section, as to their composting practices, or lack thereof.  Also if you have any thoughts on what could work here in Tofino then let me know, let’s start a discussion ball rolling.

Next month Elizabeth May, Green Party leader will be in attendance at the green breakfast, which will be taking place at Darwin’s Cafe at the Botanical Gardens. I am very excited about this and encourage anyone that is interested to attend.