THE GREEN LINE
ORIGINAL STORY
HOW TO REDUCE WASTE IN THE SUBURBS: TIPS FROM SCARBOROUGH ZERO WASTE IN MALVERN EAST
The Green Line team visited Scarborough Farmers’ Market to learn how Scarborough Zero Waste is teaching vendors, volunteers and shoppers to divert waste from landfills by reusing utensils and packaging.
Quentin De Becker, executive director of Scarborough Zero Waste, stands by the different waste bins, including a reusable dish bin at Scarborough Farmers' Market at 1051 Progress Ave.
: Mary Newman/The Green Line.
AMANDA SERAPHINA JAMES RAJAKUMAR
Indian immigrant with a post-grad in journalism from Centennial College. Now living in Grange Park, meeting new people, and hearing different stories. Has four names, so it’s a pick-your-player situation.
MARY NEWMAN
British-Canadian journalist with a decade’s experience producing for the BBC and CBC. Hails from Robin Hood country so naturally hates wealth inequality and loves organized labour. Now resides in the dog paradise of Roncesvalles.
Sept. 5, 2025
Tips on reducing waste in the suburbs:
- Gather residents to host community clean-ups as a fun event with post-clean-up snacks, games and activities.
- Collaborate with other organizations, like Repair Café, to host your own repair workshops.
- Set up a borrowing program amongst residents, like party kits with reusable cups, plates and cutlery to use at events.
- Empower residents to take waste-reducing habits to their schools and workplaces by providing resources such as videos, flyers and booklets that can be shared.
- Organize monthly meetings with residents to see their progress in implementing waste reduction practices and provide solutions to problems.
Ever had to jump above or squeeze around piles of litter on the city’s street?
Even in the suburbs of Scarborough, residents are complaining about the increasing amount of litter.
So in Malvern East, one group is going beyond community clean-ups and working on shifting mindsets, teaching residents how to reduce waste instead of just dealing with it after it's been discarded.
Scarborough Zero Waste sets up a reusable dish bin at the Scarborough Farmers’ Market at 1051 Progress Ave.
: Ricardo Alfonso for The Green Line.
Although the average amount of large litter decreased by 48 per cent between 2002 and 2022, it’s still a big problem with the City of Toronto cleaning up over 2,261 tonnes of litter from public spaces like sidewalks last year.
Meanwhile, despite producing less waste over the years, the city's landfill diversion rate has remained stagnant for over a decade, according to Toronto Foundation's 2024 Vital Signs report.
Firdous Hussein, a resident in Malvern East, stands at the Scarborough Farmers' Market at 1051 Progress Ave.
: Mary Newman/The Green Line.
Firdous Hussein, a resident of Malvern East, says there's a disconnect between people living in the city and nature. She added that the lack of knowledge on how waste impacts nature leads to apathy towards waste disposal.
“I think the challenges with disposing of waste is learning how we can reduce waste to begin with, and then how to sort out waste and then to see the whole cycle. I feel [that] if we also [know] where our litter actually goes, we'll be producing less litter," Hussein says.
“I think the main concern is, how do I reduce waste more than how do I recycle it?"
Scarborough Zero Waste hosts Repair Café in Wexford to teach residents how to reuse.
: Scarborough Zero Waste.
So a group of residents in Wexford decided to launch Scarborough Zero Waste, a grassroots environmental organization, in 2020.
Quentin De Becker,  the organization’s executive director, says today’s consumer habits — from how we eat and drink to how we socialize — directly affect the amount of litter in neighbourhoods.
“In the suburbs, many people work a lot and they use public transport to go to work, so there is the single-use packaging [that] is used a lot, like for coffee or takeaway,” he explains. “There's a link between the lifestyle in the suburb and the amount of litter that's happening in the neighbourhood.”
From community clean-ups, repair cafes, upcycling workshops at schools and borrowing programs, the group has helped Wexford residents reduce their waste.
Now, it's reaching bigger audiences at the Scarborough Farmers' Market in Malvern East. Partnering with the City of Toronto’s Live Green initiative, Scarborough Zero Waste is offering vendors and volunteers sustainable packaging and teaching shoppers how to upcycle through an art workshop.
Scarborough Zero Waste set up an upcycling art workshop for kids at Scarborough Farmers’ Market in Malvern East.
: Amanda Seraphina/The Green Line.
“We have a plethora of culturally diverse, just yummy, yummy food. And what Scarborough Zero Waste has helped us do is begin to show our vendors ways with their packaging and with the containers that they're sharing with the public, ways that we can better reduce the waste that we're putting forward using reusable cutlery, plates and cups, containers," shares Jennifer Forde, the development manager for the Scarborough Farmers' Market.
Forde hopes that through the partnership with Scarborough Zero Waste, there can be ways to reduce costs for vendors and small entrepreneurs to use sustainable, reusable packaging.
Scarborough Zero Waste will continue to partner with other organizations to reduce waste while also empowering community members to take action in their own spaces, promoting waste-reducing habits in schools and workplaces.
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