Out of Sight, Out of Mind

I got into some really interesting discussions about garbage during my trip on Saturday. The guys kept throwing stuff out the car window and it was driving me nuts. I couldn't hold back and kept telling them not to do it. It really got me thinking about garbage and how we deal with it.

There is litter and garbage everywhere here. Sometimes in piles, sometimes just randomly strewn around. Some yards are very tidy, and next door there will be something under construction/on-hiatus-until-there-is-more-money that is completely covered in litter.

I'm not sure if they do garbage collection here. I'm starting to have a bit of garbage collecting in my house and wondering what I'm going to do with it. I'll have to go see Mme Caroline at the corner store to ask her how it works. I think a lot of people just burn their garbage, but there must be a collection of some sort.

When I scolded Roger for not having garbage bins around his restaurant at the beach, he said that when people buy garbages they get stolen. A lame excuse, I think, since you can always chain the garbage to something.

I started to wonder why the garbage was making me so upset. Sure it's unsightly, sure it could be more tidy in a nice garbage bag... but I realized that we are no more noble because we are tidy. The garbage always ends up somewhere. Just because we stow it away in a dump, or (sigh) in the ocean, doesn't mean we aren't just as bad.

Our street-cleaners and garbage collection services give us the illusion that we aren't polluting the planet. One trip to the Dollar Store should be enough to realize that we are far worse than any African village. Imagine a store like Walmart or Costco and then imagine them in the garbage, then imagine all the Walmarts and Costcos in Ontario, in Canada, in the US.

Where does it all go?? Nowhere. Years and years of consumerism is piling up in our dumps. So much so we don't know where to put it anymore. We incinerate some, we recycle others, but both those processes pollute the planet. Why companies don't bother to even try to make bio-degradable products is beyond me. Cost-effectiveness means nothing if there's no planet for you to sell your products on.

There's a Lebanese restaurant in Toronto off Yonge street a couple streets south of Bloor (on Hayden I think) that serves all their take-away food in biodegradable containers. Even the forks and knives are bio-degradable, made from corn! Cheers to them.

But there *is* something to be said for tidiness and safety. There is glass and oil and animal guts getting dumped, and children (and adults) running around barefoot. It's not very nice to look at, either. There's something soothing about a tidy environment, something unsettling about having garbage and disorder everywhere. Makes you wonder what it is about our brain chemistry that makes us feel that way.

Anyway, I just thought it was funny that I took garbage collection for granted. Toronto's so clean, I've often walked around barefoot after a night of wearing heels to go out. And anyone who's walked down Church or Yonge Street the day after the Pride parade knows that the city's clean-up crew are miracle workers, though nothing gets rid of that beer stank right away.

People who work with garbage are my heroes... I certainly don't want to have to deal with it. Bless them!!

(update: a non-government organization or NGO picks up the garbage in my neighbourhood. there's a big concrete bin at the end of my street where everyone puts their garbage. i can empty my garbage now!)