Guelph mayoral candidate Aggie Mlynarz is choosing painted, wooden signs over the typical plastic campaign signs scattered around the city during election time.
And to hand-make the signs, her campaign team has partnered with four volunteers through Torchlight Services on Edinburgh Road — a local organization that offers programs for adults with developmental challenges.
Mlynarz announced earlier this month that she will not be using typical lawn signs for a number of reasons, mainly due to the amount of waste in investing in single-use plastic signs for a few weeks.
“There should be an inherent responsibility where we recognize that even if we put something in the recycling bin, it still has a long way to go before it is broken down and reused again,” Mlynarz said in a Sept. 7 news release.
At the time, Mlynarz said Guelph does not recycle the corrugated plastic, also known as coroplast, but the city has since said the material can be recycled.
On Tuesday, Mlynarz said she has filed a freedom of information request to confirm.
Before challenging Guelph’s current mayor, Cam Guthrie, for the city’s top job, Mlynarz ran for the Ontario NDP in the provincial election earlier this year.
She used plastic campaign signs then, but said she had no control over that decision.
“Those are not decisions a candidate is free to make and I think that’s quite reflective of the entire culture of signs in provincial and federal elections,” Mlynarz explained. “Municipal elections are different because you run independently and represent yourself.”
Mlynarz’s relationship with Torchlight started earlier this summer in response to the province’s decision to eliminate provincially-funded sheltered workshops, where people with intellectual disabilities do basic tasks for minimal pay.
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The province said 33 agencies across Ontario, including Torchlight and its wood shop, will transition from sheltered workshops into employment, community participation, day programming or a combination of these activities.
The move coincides with Ontario’s minimum wage rising to $14 an hour.
Mlynarz said the result has led to the loss of meaningful work for participants and the goal of this new partnership is to engage the community in a meaningful way.
“The transition into programming away from working was challenging for some of the folks here,” she explained. “By putting our heads together and having a number of discussions on how we can do something that would be environmentally and socially sustainable, we came up with this idea.”
“The participants here wanted to work again.”
To start, the partnership will involve four volunteers making 20 red and white wooden signs under the supervision of the woodshop manager.
Mlynarz said if the demand is there, more signs will be created and they will only be placed in the yards of supporters to prevent damage and vandalism.
“If it’s on someone’s property, it’s safer,” she reasoned.
The hope is to have the signs placed by the end of the week, but Mlynarz said the volunteers will work at their own pace.
She said she will also be making a donation to Torchlight based on how many hours the four volunteers work at $15 an hour.