Monday, July 13, 2009

It Stinks

Toronto is on strike and while I'm not sure what the union wants and what management is willing to give I do know that it stinks around here.
Garbage has been piling up since the very day the workers went on strike. Now I know that there are very powerful feelings about who is right and who is wrong and "why the hell would they strike during the summer and expect us to be sympathetic" but I've been looking at the whole thing from a different angle.

Lets put aside the politics for a moment and take a long hard look at the environmental impact we have on the planet. It's painfully obvious to Torontonians how much garbage they produce in 22 days. It's awful! I was shocked, well not that shocked, that within 24-hours most of the major streets were littered with trash and on every second street corner there was a couch thrown to the wolves. Seriously Toronto, were you just harbouring the garbage in hopes of a strike to make a point? And why is now the right time to get a new couch and throw out the old? Leon's has that "No Money For One Full Year" deal every week, you're not going to miss out. And what about donating that old couch to Goodwill or other local charity instead of trashing it?

I think we should all take this time to reflect on how wasteful we are and what programs we as a city and we as individuals can implement to reduce our waste.

Reduce, reuse, recycle seems like such a hackneyed term nowadays but it still seems pretty effective. Eating locally, community gardens and composts, cloth diapers, sustainable energy. Take an extra 10 seconds when shopping to choose the item with less packaging, carpool or take transit or walk, plant a tree and let the leaves fall where they may.

And while we're at it, be nice to one another and stop littering. It'd make the world a lot less stinky.