Regina to try using crushed glass in roads

Through Saskboy, I’ve learnt that Regina and the private contractor that was picking up glass for recycling claim that there is no market for recycling glass and that contaminated glass is too expensive to sort out and thus cannot be reused. I’ve also heard that it costs more to use old glass to create glass than to create glass from scratch (um sand). And I’ve heard that the dirtiest air-polluting manufacturer in Toronto makes bottles from new glass and old glass — recycling old glass into new bottles not only pollutes our city’s air (so much for being green), but more interestingly, the plant uses a significant amount of new glass to make its bottles. You’d think that there is so much used glass rolling around empty that the plant could use all old glass and not need any new glass. So why does it need new? The reporter didn’t tell us that.

I’ve also heard that contamination of recyclables results in the whole kit and caboodle being sent to the landfill, in those belching trucks along the 401 to our neighbour, pissing them off. (City’s solution: piss off our near neighbours.) And I’ve heard there’s a limit to how much of our recyclables can be recycled, not just in terms of capacity but also expense.

A few months ago, Councillor Paula Fletcher said we couldn’t introduce green bins to parks for dog poop pick up as the composting program couldn’t handle it. The reporter didn’t ask the obvious question (why, on why, do reporters always not ask the obvious question!) — why is there a limit to how much the city can compost? And does that mean some of our green bin material is going to the landfill? Just FYI, the super scooper guy who cleans up the backyards of pet owners across the city takes his truckload to the sewage treatment plant — that place where our sanitation sewers, connected to city toilets, empties out in and which is set up to treat and dispose of such waste properly.

So all this begs the question: why has no major media outlet done an investigative piece on just what happens to our garbage?

Why has there been no intensive look into and discussion of our city’s waste disposal practices?

I, personally, have lots of questions. How much of those blue bin recyclables get recycled? How much does it cost the city extra to have individuals imperfectly separate their waste? How much of the green bin gunk gets composted? Does contamination of the recycling or green bin streams result in the whole truckload going to the landfill? Has the vermin population exploded due to cutbacks in garbage pick ups? How has the affected the health of the homeless, who are more readily exposed to vermin than the well-off and properly housed? Can the poor, disabled, the newly immigrated participate in these policies or do they need assistance? Are the policies making it harder to live in this city? Has the city banded together with other cities to force manufacturers to reduce their packaging, you know, the folks are are truly responsible for the astronomical increase in garbage? Blaming us for producing too much garbage was like the NDP and The Star blaming the doctors for people getting sick — dumb. We’re not the ones who have changed packaging from a simple box to multiple layers of plastic and cardboard that are glued and welded together. How about going after the real culprits? If the cities are too afraid to do so, how do they expect us individuals to do so?

But back to my questions… Is the compost pile full? Is there a limit to how much can be composted? How much pollution is created from the city’s preferred model of landfill and letting methane vent into the air from old landfills vs. creating energy from garbage and replacing the electricty-from-non-renewable-fossil fuel plant the province foisted on us? And finally, or not as I’m sure a good journalist could come up with more questions, is contamination really making recyclables non-recyclable, and if so, is there a way to sort out the contaminants? Um yes, to the last. It’s called a mechanical sorter and would immediately bump up the whole-city recycling effort as it would not require individuals to memorize convoluted instructions as to what goes where (and kudos to you if you can, just don’t bug me that I cannot) and would no longer matter that apartments are not participating in the program as their garbage would get sorted alongside household garbage.

The only reason certain people and our politicians insist that we use the inefficient and comparatively ineffective method of having individuals sort the garbage is so that we can all flay ourselves as being bad, bad people for putting out any garbage and hold up our Councillors as being good, good people for creating the feel-good recycling program. Meanwhile, journalists swallow the party line and ask no questions. Surely they’re not all that unthinking. Surely there’s at least one journalist out there willing to put on the gloves and mask and dig deep into this topic because this topic is costing us in terms of our personal time, potential rising injury rates among garbage workers if we go to the all-bin system, and taxes, yet is not the greenest way to dispose of our garbage. Surely, I say surely, because only they have the wherewithal, the connections, the time, the skill set, and the resources to investigate just what happens to our garbage.

Related posts:

1. Garbage Sorting Mistakes in the Parks
2. CBC Toronto Does Half a Story on Green Bin Waste
3. The Latest Daft Idea from City Hall
4. Garbage Truck Questions
5. The Monstrous Blue Coming to You