Whose Crap Is It Anyhow?

This morning I was wanting to blog but didn't have a topic. Then I turned on the TV in the kitchen. Apparently Toronto is once again looking for somewhere to dump its garbage, as the Michigan solution is ending soon. Instead Toronto trash will be trucking down the road to St. Thomas.

Now this whole garbage thing is a load of crap, pardon the pun. Why don't governments at all levels get serious about solving our garbage problem? Why is it so tough to insist people go green? And I don't just mean all the households. I mean the businesses who use far more of our resources, who have to be forced to reduce, reuse and recycle. Human nature being what it is, we all have to have a little incentive to do what's right.

Look at our health. We know that eating that piece of pie or drinking that soda--diet or regular--is just not good for us, but we do it for the immediate thrill and because we can. If the food police were sifting through our garbage and or recycle to make sure we weren't eating bad stuff, we might change. (Okay, that's a little extreme!) And smoking has been talked about to death--another pun?--yet still I see those packages on the shelf in the stores and I hear of break-ins where only 'smokes' are stolen. The addition of scary health messages probably has made some difference but still we do what we want, what we talk ourselves into. When the outcome affects the public good so directly, shouldn't we be required to conform to a good garbage system?

When you get right down to basics you realize we need to take more personal responsibility for our own garbage. Here is a short list of places to start:
1. Don't accept bags for everything in the stores. (Bread already comes in a bag; why do I need another one?)
2. Find someone who can use those bags over again, like the local food bank.
3. Anything which can be reused should not be put in the garbage. (All of our old clothes go to the Diabetes people or to the rag bin for cleaning rags.)
4. Garage sales are really for recycling things you don't need. Whatever you can make in dollars is a bonus.
5. Don't buy in to cleaning systems which need a constant supply of throw-away pads, such as the current Swiffer and others.
6. Keep your thoughts on the landfill and do everything you can to keep your garbage output minimal.

And now I think it is time for me to go set up the composter I bought six months ago and to really use it!