All posts by Chris Tindal

Insert “Garbage” Pun Here

economy, food, toronto

A company with a chronic deficit solves nothing by taking out a loan. Likewise, Toronto did not solve her garbage problem yesterday. Toronto’s purchase of the deceptively-named Green Lane Environmental Ltd. (say, didn’t we used to call those things garbage dumps?) is the purchase of a little more time, nothing else.

How much time? About twenty years. How much time has it taken us to find this dump? About twenty years. And the next one will take even longer.

We’re the only species on this planet that makes true waste — as in, something that doesn’t go on to become food for something else. Looking at it that way, waste is economic inefficiency. Waste is lost profit. The only true solution to our waste problem is to eliminate waste altogether.

I know, sounds crazy, right? It’s not. In the past three years alone, Toronto has reduced the number of trucks we send to Michigan from 143 a day to 80. (And no, we didn’t just get bigger trucks.) We’ve done that by diverting recyclables and organics, and that’s just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. The real magic happens when you start using materials in continuous cycles.

Take the beer store, for example. They get back and reuse 96% of the bottles they sell! Ontario’s announcement that they’ll start doing this with LCBO products as well is a huge step in the right direction. Just think, if hungover people have the wherewithal to return bottles, how much more could we do with the packaging of non-intoxicating products?!

The bottom line is that we need to stop subsidizing waste, and start making manufacturers responsible for their own products. Author Paul Hawken often writes about having three categories of waste:

  1. Consumables. Anything that can biodegrade completely and harmlessly. That includes clothes (assuming we stop putting other weird stuff in them) and food (assuming we stop spraying them with toxic pesticides).
  2. Products of service, like cars, TVs and refrigerators would be “leased” to the customer, ultimately to be returned to the manufacturer who would be responsible for the product’s recycling or reuse.
  3. Unmarkatables. This is the nasty stuff, like radioactive isotopes, toxins, and chemicals that bioaccumulate (build-up) in your body. Manufacturers really shouldn’t be producing these things at all, but if they do, they’ll pay to have them stored in “parking lots” until they can figure out how to neutralize them.

So, you can either make products that are 100% biodegradable, figure out how to reuse the parts, or pay the government to store your waste for you.

Anyone who thinks waste reduction, and ultimately elimination, isn’t realistic, should ask themselves one question. How realistic is the idea that we can just keep finding new dumps forever? (To say nothing of all the virgin materials we keep extracting unnecessarily.)

We need to start now, so that by the time this dump is full we won’t have to go looking for another one. Let’s not waste the next twenty years. (Ah ha! There’s the pun I was looking for.)

ps. By the way, this new dump is located in some of Ontario’s (and therefore, Toronto’s) prime agricultural land. As our garbage starts to break down it will leach into the earth that grows our food. The phrase “don’t shit where you eat” comes to mind.

Run for the Cure

health, toronto

I just got this email from my brother. I knew the friend Alex mentions below. He was one of those genuinely nice and fun guys who no one could ever dislike. Anyway, I wanted to share it with you.

i’m participating in a fundraiser for breast cancer on october 1st where i will be running 5k, imagining that i’m stomping on cancer with each stride. you might already know that i lost a really amazing friend last month to cancer, and while it wasn’t breast cancer, a number of his friends are running together as a team called, ‘the palligators’ to support the canadian breast cancer foundation. it should also be noted that he is not the first person this group of friends has lost to cancer.the point of this run is to raise money to research treatment, early detection and prevention in addition to supporting communities and families affected by breast cancer. so, having said that, i need your help reaching my personal fundraising goal of $500, and my team’s fundraising goal of $3000. i’ve included a link in this e-mail which will take you to my donations page. you can do it online with your credit card and it’s super quick and easy. you even get a tax receipt for your charitable donation. plus, i’ll be eternally grateful.

Click here.

even if you can only donate $10, it will put me that much closer to my goal.

thanks in advance.

alex.

An Afternoon on the Toronto Islands

toronto

Claire and I spent this afternoon biking around the Toronto islands (specifically, Ward and Algonquin islands) taking part in CommunityAIR‘s Toronto Island House Tour. (CommunityAIR is a group that advocates against expansion of the Toronto Island Airport.)

Aside from being a fundraiser, the day was also meant to raise awareness that people who live on the island are, well, real people. We met extremely nice residents (thanks Baye, Doreen, Jennie, and Ken!) who welcomed us into their homes and offered us wine and food, ranging from brie to strawberries to lemon loaf to popcorn (pretty much my four favourite foods).

Houses on the island are only allowed to be two stories high, and can’t have basements. The result is a series of pleasant and modest cottage-like buildings. At least two had fewer square feet than a one-bedroom downtown condo.

One of funniest aspects of the day was how everyone kept asking us if we were “on the list.” As in, the list to get onto the island. (Hmmm…sounds like a movie, doesn’t it?)

See, houses on the island aren’t allowed to be sold at market rates, or to just anyone who wants them. There’s a list (and a lottery system to get on said list) which gives you the opportunity to, when a house goes on sale, buy it for the price that the building (excluding the land) was assessed at several years ago, indexed only to inflation. The first person on the list gets first dibs, and if they don’t want it the second person is asked, and so on. One house we saw was assessed at less than $90,000. Others couldn’t have been much higher.

Almost everyone we talked to encouraged us to get on the list so that we could come “join them.” There’s a very strong sense of community. Children run and bike around in groups, relatively unattended. It’s hard for them to escape I guess, and they seem to be the responsibility of everyone. Every Saturday morning a group of people bike over to the St. Lawrence Market together for groceries.

“You know what the secret is,” asked Jennie? “No cars.” That’s why you know who your neighbours are. That’s why children can play in the “street.” That’s why it’s so quiet and calm. That’s why the air is so clear. (The last two, of course, come with the exception of when planes are landing.)

Add that to reason number [I’ve–lost–count] why cities should be built around people and not cars. All the more reason to look forward to this Friday’s International Car Free Day.

Economy, Environment, Health

ecology, economy, health, polls

Those are the three most important issues for Canadians, in that order, according to a poll released yesterday. The status-quo parties are still treating them as three separate issues, but we know better. You can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy environment, and you can’t have healthy Canadians on a sick planet.

“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.” – Herman Daly, Former Senior Economist, World Bank

That’s good news for the Green Party, because we’re the only ones who can speak with credibility on all three of those issues, and how they relate to each other.

“The emergence of Stéphane Dion as the ecological conscience of the Liberal leadership campaign and the advent of Elizabeth May as leader of the Green Party, are blowing away the NDP’s chances of portraying itself as the champion of the environment.” Chantal Hébert, The Toronto Star, Sept. 13, 2006.

Our current economy is designed to use up our resources as quickly as possible. As long as we believe that “economic growth” can continue as it has for only the past millisecond of our existence, we will fail. We need to transform our economy.

Our environment is in trouble. A full two-thirds of the systems that support life on this planet are in decline. As long as environmental policies are focused exclusively on “spending money” on the environment and regulating against misaligned economic indicators, they will fail. We need to transform our outlook.

Our health system is sick. From childhood asthma in the young to a cancer epidemic in the increasingly young, costs of all kinds are rising. As long as we think we can fix our heath care system by increasing its funding in perpetuity, as we get sicker and sicker, we will fail. We need to transform the way we think about health.

Canadians are smart people, and have their priorities right. Now we’ve just got to vote like it.