After the current flurry of community anxiety caused by the incinerator project fades away, we’ll still have to deal with the collection and disposal of the garbage we produce. Don’t wait for ‘the government’ to take care of it, because we’ve seen that government gets it wrong, time after time.
So it’s up to us, the individual householders, to sort through the extra stuff we own and decide what goes to the nearly new or yard sales, what goes to be repurposed for our own uses, what goes into the nearby compost device, and what is hopeless waste. Where that will go, is yet to be determined.
Packaging is one thing we accumulate, and some is easy to make use of. Cardboard, for example, has many uses; a ground blanket, fire starter, part of the diet of a worm bin, or light mulch for a garden. If you buy from Amazon or Ikea, your goods come in high quality cardboard, much too good to throw away. If you have more than you want, call me.
Any glass jar with a sealable lid is too valuable to throw away. Just you wait, we will live to see a time when those are no longer available as a free bonus with food you bought. I have a few stashed away; first come, first served. We’ve already outlived the large metal cans that coffee came in. Too late, but I do have a few of those.
I’ve seen reports about a business which takes the hardest-to-recycle types of plastic, and grinds it to chunks which are then mixed with cement and made into building blocks like big Legos, which have several properties over conventional concrete blocks. That is above our pay grade currently, but it appears to be not a very high level of technology, so a local entrepreneur could set up such a business and turn that problematic waste into a useful product.
Municipal elections are in a year and a half; that’s your opportunity to become part of the team that will decide how to deal with the waste material people can’t or won’t repurpose. One has to vote for someone who has good ideas.
Robert Wills
SHAWVILLE/ THORNE
