Ahead of tomorrow night’s monthly meeting at the Sooke Public Library, here’s an update and call for participation from our Wendy O’Connor …
“Good day everyone,
ZWS meets once a month at the Sooke branch of the Vancouver Island Public Library on the third Wednesday of the month from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Why not just mark it in into your calendars or set up a recurring digital reminder? If you would like to attend but cannot make it on Wednesdays, then let us know your preference and we can see if we can find a better meeting day for the majority. Nothing is written in stone! Email your thoughts to wendyoconnor@me.com. 
Zero Waste Sooke will once again staff a non-profit table at the Sooke Country Market one Saturday a month this June, July, August and September. If you could spare a couple of hours once a month it would be greatly appreciated.
A brief summary of who we are and what we have done so far
The impetus for our goals and direction came from a brilliant “Talk Trash” Community Open Space meeting that we organized on local waste management issues back in April 2016 at Sooke Community Hall, which in turn led us to present a report to the District of Sooke Council. At that meeting we presented our 3 main “asks” from the District:
2) Public drinking fountains in Sooke to discourage the use of plastic water bottles; and
3) Resource Recovery Centre featuring Compost Centre, Re-Use It Store, and related cottage industries.
Rejoice with us in the acceptance and on-going implementation of the first 2 of our 3 asks! 🙂
- District of Sooke’s May, 2019 plastic bag bylaw (which you can read in full here) comes into full effect on Jan. 1, 2020. Wonderful that so many in the community — retailers and shoppers alike — understand and champion #BYOB!
- A three-tier drinking water fountain is planned for near the new washroom at John Phillips Memorial Park, and is also intended for washroom facilities at Whiffin Spit in 2020.
Some of our other accomplishments over the past 4 years since inception are:
- We were extremely involved in the Sooke Region Planet Earth Day Celebrations in April 2018;
- We have held 5 VERY successful Repair Cafes and continue to do so twice a year, spring and fall;
- ZWS has hosted an annual community clean-up each year, twice in conjunction with ProjectServe and students from the University of Victoria;
- 3 Delegation presentations to the District of Sooke Council over the past 3 years seeking follow-up action on our requests to Council;
- Hosted an information table once a month each summer at the Sooke Country Market, of which 3 of those 10 or 11 sessions have involved hosting the Victoria Compost Education Centre;
- Family Literacy Day workshop for youngsters on creating musical instruments from recycled materials. A collaboration with the Sooke Region Literacy Project at Edward Milne Community School;
- Presentation on electronics re-use and recycling by Triston Line, a member of the EMCS Robotics team, at the Sooke library;
- Numerous workshops at the Sooke library, including sessions on zero waste Furoshiki gift wrapping, making your own laundry soap and kids workshops;
- Working with reps from Village Foods, Home Hardware and Western Foods regarding plastic bag use in Sooke, creating a “Bring your Own Bag” sign for display in these stores; and
- in Oct 2016 Major Tait officially declares “Waste Reduction Week in Sooke” at the request of ZWS. Litterless lunch and waste audit held at John Muir Elementary School.
The majority of this has been accomplished with a dedicated handful of people………who could really use some more support! Please spread the word and share this post with any like-minded friends. We need younger people as well, we need someone with graphic designing skills, we need someone who would like to push out tweets on twitter, and others who like working with Facebook. We don’t need much of your time, a couple of hours a month.
Sincerely,
Wendy O’Connor