GREEN PRACTICES
 We provide our guests with Ayurvedic Copper Pots filled with water RESULT: In addition to various health benefits, they also help us limit our plastic water bottle usage...and it tastes wonderful! |  At our hot beverage area, we've assembled reusable K-cups filled with freshly ground coffee for our guests RESULT: Decreases our contribution to the growing problem of plastic pollution |  We mend our linens! Taking the time to mend with lovely patches isn't a new concept, but it is a craft seen less often. RESULT: By repairing or repurposing our linens, we keep them out of landfill |
|---|---|---|
 We love displaying flower arrangements around the B&B - and when the petals fall, we dry them for our homemade bath salts RESULT: A relaxing bath with lovely flowers and the aroma of pure essential oils:) |  Instead of changing our guests towels and sheets daily, we politely ask that they please hang up their towels after use. RESULT: This helps to decrease our usage of water as well as detergent |  SSI has a WONDERFUL Recycling Depot - we have 10 different sorting bins that we take to the depot and sort at the facility. RESULT: Doing our part decrease our landfill contribution |
Before moving to Salt Spring, we were big city people. We LOVED living in New York City and to be honest I think it still holds a piece of our hearts. Our lives in the city had many conveniences, but at the time, we didn't think of them as "conveniences" it was just how things worked .
Every day, we had a bag of garbage that we would leave outside, and then like magic it would disappear. We would also buy big blue plastic bags for our recycling, and on Wednesdays it too would disappear...poof! When we needed pet supplies, baby supplies, groceries - well we'd order it online and the next day it would be sitting on our front door step. Hungry and don't feel like cooking? No problem! Select what you want online and 20-30min later you're scarfing down Pad Thai and you don't even have dishes to clean - just toss it all in the bin!
Then we moved to Salt Spring, and we were very confused. How come our garbage bags are still on the curb? Is anyone going to pick up our recycling?? What do you mean your restaurant isn't open at 9pm??
We quickly learned that life on Salt Spring was going to be different.
Recycling... we recycle nearly everything! We have 10 sorting bins, and once a week we load up the car with the bins and dump each one into their respective containers at the Recycling Depot for free.
Compost... we have 3 compost containers as well as friends with farms who love our scraps.
Garbage... whatever is leftover after recycling and composting, we drive over to Laurie's Recycling where they weigh it and we pay for each bag.
Once we became more involved in our waste, we saw the direct impact all the recycling made to lessen our landfill waste. So then we started doing other things... we started to do our part.
There's always more to be done, but here are some examples of a few our environmental efforts...