The Omnifarium - Toronto/GarbageDay.html

A New Garbage Day

Fri, 18 Jan 2008, 09:45

Here in Guildwood Village, today is the first day of using the city's new blue bins for our recycling garbage. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to have gotten the message that the new bins are to be used now. Come on, guys, get with it!

Like many other cities, Toronto is running out of places to dump our garbage. Most of it now is shipped to a landfill in Michigan, which is politically unpopular in that state. So alternatives need to be found. The city has a goal of reducing the waste sent to landfill by 70% by the year 2010. The new bin program is one more step along that road.

In our home, garbage is separated into four streams. First, non-animal compostable waste goes to our backyard compost bin. Second, other compostable material goes into the green bin which is picked up every week. Third, recyclable material goes into the blue bin. Finally, all the rest goes into the traditional garbage can. In this household, the vast majority of our waste goes into the recycling bin. This week, our blue bin was full up to the top.

The classification of waste at the curb is an important and easy way to keep garbage out of the landfill. But there's a lot more that can be done. We also need to get the message out to businesses to reduce the amount of packaging. Consider my latest visit to that popular membership-based bulk warehouse store. You can get cheaper prices on many products (some we actually use), but you also get a lot of garbage along with the deals. Take for example the case of juice drink boxes. There's plastic wrap and cardboard around the 30 boxes. But wait, there's more! For some reason, each group of three boxes is wrapped in yet another layer of plastic. All that plastic will end up in the landfill.

Then there's the packaging around the ink jet cartridges. You could buy a small paper box containing two cartridges at Staples. Or, you could go to that wholesale warehouse store and buy a large plastic container containing three cartridges. What do you do? The package of three with the horrendous plastic package offers a price discount of $5 per cartridge!

Our governments need to pass legislation requiring manufacturers and retailers to be more responsible for the garbage they generate. Consider laws in some European countries which require companies to be fully responsible for the proper disposal of their products after use. Imagine that: In Germany, for example, once you've driven your car for ten years and you need to get rid of it, you take it back to the dealer or to the factory, not the dump. This gives the manufacturer a good incentive to make the product recyclable, or to make parts of the product reusable. Here in North America, we need to get to that point too.

Hans

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