Clean Break: Is Toronto’s trash being wasted?

Letter to the Toronto Star Feb. 11 2011

We need more than an “adult conversation” about waste. We need to grow up. Our society has been consuming and disposing for decades as if we were the only species and the only generation.

Debating incineration, and its aliases, is a waste of time and money. These processes allow our society to continue the cycle of destruction and further delays real solutions. It simply does not make financial or environmental sense to destroy products that have required precious resources, energy and labour to produce.

We need to look at what makes up waste, and then develop front-end solutions to eliminate it. One simple example is diapers. Why does the diaper industry, with its huge profits, require municipal taxpayers to be responsible for the costs of their wasted products? Diapers can be collected and reprocessed by the diaper industry, at their cost — not ours.

We must stop subsidizing industry’s products and packaging. And we must stop subsidizing the waste industry.

Waste is an example of inefficiency and our society can’t afford it anymore. There are plenty of simple, sensible and realistic solutions to waste and wasteful habits. As adults, we can develop solutions which protect the environment, the public purse, and the resources that belong to our future generations.

Kelly Clune, Orillia