Climate Change is Sexy and Fun!

Shinjiro Koizumi, Japan's new environment minister, wants his coal-dependent country's youth to see the fight against climate change as "sexy" and "fun".  Maybe he thinks it can be something like this:

I didn't attend the fun and sexy Climate Change protest in London yesterday, but I was heartened to see the number of young people who marched.  My excuse for non-participation is that I am still ill and I tire easily, I am practically deaf in my left ear, I was drinking a beer with three of my neighbours (important) and I decided to write a blog post instead.  I am an avid recycler and I really do try to minimize my carbon footprint.  I bike or walk when I can, and I am interested in purchasing an electric vehicle.  If I could convince my neighbours to co-operatively purchase such a vehicle, I would be really happy! Especially if it could be parked in my driveway.

The climate change / destroying the Earth issue can be overwhelming for people.  Bureaucrats move slowly, the people in charge don't care enough to actually do anything and we are all busy.  I do think that everyone can make small changes to try to improve our dire situation.  Here is a list of some of the things that I have done or currently do to minimize my carbon footprint.  And before you get annoyed with me, let me tell you that I am no saint:  I have two vehicles, I live in a big house, I drive frequently and I have a pool.  No air con though.  I do what I can to feel better about the way I live.  Here's my list of easy things that you can do to feel better about the way you live:

COMPOST.  I have three composters and a green cone.  They were all purchased at the City of London's Recycling Depot.  I use the compost that I produce in my gardens, and I yell at my kids and husband when they chuck things in the garbage instead of the compost.  I did not have a garden this summer because I went briefly insane (another story), but I did enjoy the fruits of my neighbour's labour (Hi Dave!).

The Green Cone is a recycler's dream.  EVERYTHING can go into it.  It is really disgusting and I love it.

I also have (scratch that - HAD) a dog shiz composter.  I don't need one any longer because all the dog waste can go in the green cone.  It was really easy to make:   cut the bottom half or third off a plastic garbage can, dig a hole as deep as your can, put the bin in the hole and fill around it until the top of the bin is level with the ground.  Add some septic starter.  Kapow! You're in business.  Take that, dog crap!

I have composted my food waste since my early twenties.  I did not grow up in a household that composted but once I became aware of this easy, waste-minimizing activity, I was on board.  Here's what my compost looks like at the time of this writing:

Let's see what delicacies are hiding in the can:  orange peel, pomelo skin, espresso grounds and some dried leaves (found on the kitchen floor because our back door is always open so that the dogs can come and go, and because of this there's often garden waste in the house.  And yesterday Gwen caught a squirrel in the dining room!  Another story for another day).  There are also yam skins in the bottom.  Please don't bitch at me for not eating local - my daughter begged for the pomelo and I caved.  See, I'm only human.  Oh and there's a nectarine pit in there now too because I had to take a sustenance break.

I am amazed at the number of friends of mine who do not compost.  Why the fuck not?  They say that the composters will attract animals (they're right, they do, but who cares?); they complain about foul odours (not an issue if you empty it frequently) or they are just lazy (no excuse).   Here is a list of some of the surprising things that you can put in your composter besides the usual kitchen scraps:  dryer fluff (start hanging your clothes to dry, people, and then you won't have that lint problem), tea bags and coffee grounds, old bread and pasta, hair (because everyone cuts their own hair, right?), newsprint, printer paper, cardboard, and vegetarian animal waste (because who doesn't love them a guinea pig?).  Things that should not go into your compost:  dog poo (green cone), human poo (lol), meat and oil (green cone) and noxious weeds.
Get thee a composter, peeps!

We briefly had a worm bin in our basement but that was my husband's domain (man cave).  I am not sure what went on down there, but I know we are no longer vermiculturists.

Last but not least, the city of London plans to implement a green bin program in 2020.  About time, I say:  Green Bins in London.  I am not sure why it has taken council so freaking long to make up their minds about this.  

PERIOD
People hate it when I talk about my period.  You know who you are and you know what, I don't care.  I bleed, if you're a woman of childbearing age you bleed, and if you're a man, your Mom and sisters and girlfriends and wives bleed.  If you're one of those new people who are neither man nor woman, you might bleed too.  To the bleeders, I say, get out your trusty sewing machine and make some pads.  If you're not handy, ask a friend (not me) to make them for you.  Or buy them.  I bought my daughter some made in Canada period underwear and she loves them.  You should also invest in this:

It's a Diva Cup / keeper / menstrual cup.  Made in Canada, it is a total life-changer! You can wear it all day long, you don't feel it and IT ROCKS! And ladies, you know how when you have your stupid period and you want to swim because you're one of those women who say "eff you period, you're not cramping my style", and you put in a tampon and you swim, and then when you get out of the water you know that you have a limited amount of time before the blood will leech down your tampon string and cause an embarrassing accident? Well that doesn't happen with the Diva Cup!  Another no-brainer.

BODY WASTE
A shit-hot topic for all.  I used MOTHER-EASE (made in Canada) diapers for my kids.  I saved tons of money, and I resold them for approximately 70% of what we I paid after they had been used by BOTH kids.

THE ISSUE WITH TISSUE
Did you know that toilet paper could be doing more damage to the environment than driving a large, gas-guzzling SUV?  I bet you didn't know that.  Read this article:  toilet paper is crappy.  I keep meaning to force my family to use old facecloths that I have cut up to wipe, but I haven't gotten around to it.  I am going to start though.  They are going to be mad / disgusted, but they'll get over it.  If they want to feel the cotton-y softness of Cottonelle they can use their own money to buy their own tissue.
As for the issue of "number 2", I don't want to deal with people's poo cloths - even my own family's! - so this is what I have come up with:

1) Use newsprint / sheets of paper from a catalogue  - hahahahahahhh! Damn.  Where's the Christmas Wish Book when I need it?

2) Everyone in the family is responsible for washing their own shit tickets.  Right.  That will never happen in this lifetime.

3) Bidet purchase- hmmmn.  I will investigate.  Okay, I just did some investigation and this is what I found:

A bidet attachment that is under $50 and one that people actually like and use (read the reviews):  Brondell bidet.  I am going to buy it and will report back.

I really do want to reduce our toilet tissue usage.  I am going to implement the washcloth strategy discussed above, and that combined with my new Brondell should save me some money and the earth some trees.  If you are my friend and you visit me and need to use my loo, don't fret, I promise that I will have some "guest tissue" just for you!

PLAQUE
I DESPISE TOOTHBRUSHES as much as I hate SINGLE USE PLASTIC CUTLERY (get yourself a little pouch and shove a knife, fork  and/or spork in it.  If you are one of those people who insist on using straws, then get a metal one of those too).
Sure, I like to brush my teeth once in a while and I love that minty-fresh feeling in my mouth but what the hell is up with the idiots who produce those rock-hard plastic tooth scrubbers?  That plastic will never break down.  How could it?  It makes my head hurt when I think of it.  My darling daughter bought me some bamboo toothbrushes for Christmas last year and I love them.  They are recyclable, although the instructions on the side of the box that they came in were a bit much.  You have to pull out the bristles with a pair of pliers, discard them, and only then you can recycle the brush.  Better than plastic though.

STORAGE
We don't buy saran wrap any longer and you know what, we don't miss it.  I did catch myself reaching for it in the beginning, but I got used to not using it.  What we do:  stick your leftovers in a bowl and put a plate on top.  Bam!  You can also use pyrex with glass lids like they did in the "olden days".  I get a lot of these at the Goodwill, and they are usually priced at $2 - $4.

The modern version of this product has plastic lids instead of glass.  I find that the lids break easily and so when I can I try to use the vintage products, like the one above:

I know what you're thinking. If you are bringing a casserole to someone's house, what are you to do? I tend to transport it au naturel.  Nothing happens, I promise.  It won't become contaminated, bugs won't eat it.  It will be okay.  If this is TOO MUCH for you, cover your food with a clean dishtowel.  Or buy one of those 9 by 13 glass baking dishes that come with a lid.  

Okay, this blog post is getting lengthy and you are probably tired of reading it.  The rest of my good things are going to go in a list with little or no elaboration.  If you have questions, ask away.

• Shop consignment and thrift stores.  The Goodwill is my favourite store. 
• Try to fix things that are broken
• Don't buy bottled water.  
• When grocery shopping, byob (bring your own bag or use cardboard boxes).  Why are so few stores offering free cardboard boxes for customers to use?  Jeez.  Don't use those small plastic produce bags that the stores provide.  Make some reusable ones.
• Ditch your air con.  Plant some trees around your house.  Shut the drapes during the day.  Invest in ceiling fans.
• Refuse to buy things that are wrapped in plastic

Okay enough from me.  I have more things to add here but I am tired of writing this. I have been at it for an hour and a half.  

If you enjoyed this post, you might like this one that I wrote a couple of years ago: 

http://quittyprickly.blogspot.com/2016/02/

To end, this is a poster that I made when I was a kid.  Lord knows why I saved it, but it makes me laugh.  Especially the stylish beer cap jewellery and car part cutlery.  

I usually end on a musical note with a Youtube video.  Let me just tell you all that Raffi has written a new song called Young People Marching with references to Greta Thunberg.  I am not a fan of said tune so here's some Tom Petty instead:

Industrial Tourism

Last Friday, my son's First Lego League coaches organized a field trip to The City of London's Material Recovery Centre.

I know... so cool!

I'm currently reading the last book in Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, and so this trip comes at an opportune time (building on themes of recycling and post-industrial waste).

Here's the facility, located on Manning Drive in London, ON:

With this winter's minuscule amount of precipitation you can almost believe that I took this picture myself

I was super excited to learn what happens to the boxes, bottles, cardboard and cans that I toss into my blue box, but my children were less than enthused: 

Me:  Kids, it is going to be so interesting; I have always wanted to tour a recycling facility! 

Nath:  Mum, it's recycling; it's not Disney.

Gwen:  Mum, it's a PD day! I can't believe you're wasting our day like this...

Nath:  Oh yeah, pop cans are SO awesome (can you hear the sarcasm dripping from the 12-year-old?)

Okay, so the kids weren't thrilled about our little trip.  To muster up some interest, I dug out my scrapbook and showed them a recycling project that I did in Grade Five:

 Blue, Colt 45, O.V. and Michelob?  

"How can you not be excited by this?" I asked, thrusting the red poster board in their incredulous faces.

Admittedly, this project is pretty lame, but it's also hilarious.  I am imagining myself reaching for a pencil out of my handcrafted pop can pencil holder and slicing my finger off on the sharp, ragged aluminum rim.  I do recall making the beer cap brooches (!) but I was at a loss as to how I would have produced the fender cutlery.  That would be one giant fork...  

Still, the kids were all eye rolls and snark.  Please remind me why we feel the need to reproduce?

And so I found myself bribing the children with a Mickey D's breakfast, and being thoroughly disgusted with myself for 

• inhaling grease 
• bribing the brats 
• eating at the world's greatest waste producer in the fast food industry 

I'm hanging my head in shame here.  

But let me get to the trip.

I did a bit of reading beforehand and learned that the recycling facility, first and foremost, is a big business.  The contract is handled by Miller Waste Systems.  The only green driving that company is the green of filthy lucre. And here I thought that the city's recycling initiatives were spearheaded by powerful ecowarriors who want to save the planet.

image from:  http://archive.feedblitz.com/746187/~4244546

It really is all about the cash, peeps.  I wasn't going to let that colour my fun, and so I donned my thick plastic hardhat, safety glasses and ear protection.  It was initially difficult to experience such sensory deprivation but I acclimatized quickly enough, recognizing that beauty is indeed pain:  

industrial chic

Hard-hatted up, we are ready for the entertainment to begin:

happy robokids

The tour proper began with a hello to this fine fellow: 

What a cutie! And so industrious too

The kids met Maiike, our patient and knowledgeable tour guide, who spoke a bit about safety and explained that we'd be playing a sorting game before visiting the production floor.  The kids were presented with various items that typically appear in the blue bins:  glass jars, lightbulbs, half full paint cans, cardboard coffee cups, milk cartons etc.  They had to determine whether the items belong in recycling bins, the garbage, Household Special Waste or hazardous waste. 

What we learned:

• 90% of the recycling is sold locally to businesses in Southwestern Ontario.  Paper coffee cups, which are new additions to the blue box, go to the U.S. while the market for used plastic wrap is in China.

• Paint can be recycled.  Loop Paint, in St. Catharines, recycles leftover paint and plants a tree for every gallon sold.  I love this!  Londoners, take your leftover paint to Rona or Lowe's.  For more on paint recycling, click here.  For more on recycling batteries, oil, solvents, propane tanks etc, click here.

• Some recycling tips from facility posters:

aerosol cans go in the bin?  who knew?

Maiike made a point of telling us that wrapping paper cannot be recycled; it goes in the garbage

The kids each received an adorable souvenir - a mini blue box!

Recycling is not difficult, people.  I am sure that everyone who reads this blog is on board; however, I am frequently astonished when I visit people's homes and see that they're throwing out their cereal boxes and paper, instead of flattening them and tossing them in the blue box.  I am also disgusted by the number of businesses that do not practice recycling and/or use excessive amounts of packaging or  plastic cutlery.  I DEPLORE PLASTIC CUTLERY, but you know what I hate even more?  When people toss out cutlery after one fucking use.  My head spins.  Rant over.

Here we are, entering the first stage of the facility's production:

We were astonished by the enormous amount of waste, growing by the minute it seemed.

A closer look at the mountain of refuse.  The kids had a lot of questions.  

Although I am already a hyper-recycler (Don't throw that in the garbage; you can compost it!  That goes in the Goodwill bag!  Who threw out this yogurt tub???), it readily became apparent to me that everyone needs to be on board with recycling.  Equally important is reducing our volume of household waste; we are all responsible for keeping the planet healthy.

We watched one of the recycling trucks dump its load into the warehouse:

The truck has separators that allow only one stream of recycling to be unloaded at a time

Once the truck was empty, a front loader (not pictured) pushed the waste into a gigantic pile:

Our city produces a titanic amount of waste, and the facility is capable of processing up to 75,000 tons per day, but that does not preclude us from trying to decrease our household litter and recycling.

When we stepped onto the production floor, it occurred to me that I've seen too many episodes of Dexter - my initial impression was that this would be an ideal setting for a horror movie:  

I don't want to die in a tub of cat litter!  Go away, scary man!  Stop chasing me up and down all these rickety, metal stairs!  Ooh, it's slippery and I've fallen!   Where am I?  Why is it so dark in here?  What's that noise?  Where's the exit?  Why is this door locked???

All those dark corners, mysterious drips, large dirty machines, filthy ramps and creepy conveyor belts.  I kept expecting to see an arm or a finger roll by...

The sad teddies didn't help either:

One of many Teddy Bear stuffies in the plant.  They must have a thing for stuffies.

Taking a page out of Ted, I call this piece "Bear Humping Fan"

London's Machinex - the largest in North America - is a sophisticated sorting and recycling system, but is amazing in its simplicity.  The magnet portion of the system grabs all the steel on the belt and diverts it from the glass and paper products:

items entering the magnet

The air separator divides the remaining recyclables based on weight.  A blast of compressed air pushes everything (except the heavy objects such as glass) up and off the conveyor belt and into the air toward the optical sorter:

watching objects being processed by the optical sorter 

The sorter uses a combination of light, lasers and cameras to analyze the objects' colour, size, shape, and material and sorts them accordingly.

another view of the optical sorter

I felt sorry for the manual sorters (see below).  The belts move extremely quickly and I was constantly worried that one of the kids was going to get caught on the belt and processed in the compactor.

Watching the recyclables race along made me feel slightly ill, like I was on a dodgy spinny ride at the fair.  When I was in my late teens, I was employed by my cousin-in-law's sister's husband (how ridiculous is that description?) at a paint factory.  I was one of three women out of a total workforce of twelve and I was responsible for hanging the entire day's production "on the line" - fun stuff like mud flap hangers, telephone bases, and riding lawnmower handles.  Whenever a deadline had to be met (all the time, it seemed), the powers that be would ratchet up the line to warp speed.  It was futile to attempt to keep up.  But I tried, dammit.  I'm competitive; I couldn't help myself.  As I fell farther and farther behind, the other employees would eventually trickle over to help me.  As soon as I was caught up, they would abandon me until I fell behind again.

manual sorters removing garbage; everything remaining on the belt goes through the entire process again

After sorting, the recyclables are crushed or flattened and shaped into bales.  A bale of crushed aluminum cans is a fascinating thing to behold.  There are a lot of cans in that bale (9000, I think):

beware of sharp edges...

a bale of cardboard waste, paper exploding out of it

The bales of plastic bags earn the facility a mere $10 each

I took the picture below to illustrate how the recyclables are desperate to return to their former state.  Bands of steel may contain the bale's contents but the goods tend to escape their bonds.  In the photo above, the bale is warped and at quite an angle and below, the plastics are busting out of their bales.

steel cans

At the end of the tour, we stopped by two blue bins that were full of an average household's yearly recycling (60%).  We can do better than that, I think.

it doesn't look like much, does it?

As we exited the facility, I spied this dusty book displayed prominently on a stand by a huge cardboard cutout of a chocolate chip cookie.  It made me laugh.  I wondered if it had been "rescued" from a blue box, like all those teddy bears...

Our day done, we thanked Maiike, removed our gear and headed out to our vehicles, visions of recycling dancing in our heads.

I would definitely recommend taking a tour of this facility; give them a call.  It's open to the public, and it's free.  I think it made a big impact on all of us and my kids told me afterwards that they loved it (I knew it).    

And so my friends, I will leave you with a brief musical interlude by Jack Johnson - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, aka Three It's a Magic Number: