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:

Cursemas Greetings

My Christmas challenge to myself was to come up with a list of Christmas words on the side of the fridge.  Kids helped (peppermint, heart, giving, gift, candy cane, wish, luv, present, Santa).

My contributions were beer, book, Quaalude, toil and jooze (my favourite).  Jews and booze combo.  Who doesn't love Jews and booze?  

I had a few letters left over, but pshaw, I did my best:

cause who doesn't love a Christmas quaalude?

I'm listening to Wham's Last Christmas on the telly (Stingray Music Videos) and it's accompanied by the original video - that Andrew Ridgeley hasn't aged a bit! - while waiting for my mug of Christmas Cheer to do its business (ex-lax, anyone?) while writing my Christmas letter... ooh I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

How I actually feel inside is empty and slightly nauseated, but no need to dwell on that...

This season, I received a sum total of 7 Christmas cards (one addressed to Nathaniel from the overpriced, entitled child's camp he attends, one a very heartfelt thank you from the Vice Principal at the kids' school - humblebrag- and one from our Free Press Carrier who delivers our paper very sporadically).  I could be depressed by the dearth of Xmas cards in my mailbox, but I am telling myself that all of my friends are ecologically and environmentally minded, and that they are sending their Christmas greetings to me telepathically.

Eeeeeyuw.  Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is on.

A scream from the office!  Nath is grooving to the tunes while playing Agario (the new Mindcraft):  "this is my favourite Christmas song, Mumma!".  The child has obviously sustained permanent brain damage from yesterday's spill.  I wrote an email about this incident to my sister-in-law earlier today, and I know she won't mind that I cut and pasted this text from it (thanks, Jeannette):

Let me tell you about our day yesterday.  Nathaniel wiped out on our solstice stroll (we were going to whip rocks and sesame seeds in the Thames to rid ourselves of negativity - sounds ridic but I'm not kidding).  While walking one of the dogs, Nath rather stupidly had stuffed both of his hands in his coat pockets and attempted to descend a slippery hill while being pulled by Dill.  He slipped on the path, and I watched him faceplant onto concrete, shuddering when I heard the thud as his mug hit cement.  Poor guy.  He is bruised, goose-eggy and bloody on his forehead, nose, upper lip and chin.  He is not concussed, thank god.  I'll send you the pics.

We turned around and came home, sesame seeds and rocks forgotten.  Shortly after this unfortunate incident, I began to feel quite ill. I had had nagging abdominal pain for most of the day, but it became much worse and I went to bed.  AFter several bouts of projectile vomiting, fever and the most painful abdominal pain I've ever experienced, short of childbirth, Richard called Telehealth and they recommended a visit to the ER.  I was there for five hours, and endured some disgusting procedures and tests.  I have to have a colonoscopy in the New Year.  

So today, I have been parked on the couch, and drinking giant glasses of Christmas Cheer in the form of liquid laxative.  A jubilant day for me.  I am feeling a bit better, and Nath says that his face, while hideous-- think bar fight-- doesn't hurt as much. 

Ahhh... the joys of Christmas present.  Here are some pics of said events:

Richard and Gwen look a bit peeved here, I think

I made Gwen pose like this to show off her giantess feet (the ten-year-old wears a woman's 8.5)

Stop it, Mumma!  Don't put that on Facebook!

a bag of frozen brussels sprouts wrapped in a tea towel to reduce swelling

He looks better today:

It warms the heart, friends.

Yesterday, the four of us participated in our annual Christmas Assembly Line, making shitloads of perogies so at least we aren't starving.  The kids wrestled on the filthy kitchen floor, and one of them cried and Richard swore at me for being bossy.  whatev, sous-chef.  
This, my friends, is the true meaning of Christmas.

The wrastlin' around.  Gwen won.  

Here's a link to my perogy recipe, with accompanying pics, should you and yours want to make your own Perogy dough and Heidigger doo:

PerogyTime

I will end this post by wishing anyone who bothers to read this blog the Merriest of Christmases.  I recommend a stiff drink, a good book, turkey (dark meat, please), skating on a pond or local outdoor ice rink, A Wonderful Life and friend and family time, in that order.

Optional Musical Accompaniment:  Wham's Last Christmas, natch.

Painball

This morning, having just slid in to a delicious tubful of steaming water for a prolonged soak, I opened Guy Vanderhaege's The Last Crossing and read this:

A man notoriously close-mouthed, infamous for one-word answers, he is practising thinking in English. Resting his hand on the grip of the pistol jammed in his belt, he laboriously retrieves all the English names for the weapon. Revolver. Six-shooter. Side arm. Equalizer. Firearm. 45. Short gun. Hog-leg. Roscoe. Peacemaker. Colt. It is a difficult task to recall them all. English is a stubborn balky tongue.

Except when I read it, it was like this: (Christream of consciousness in yellow italics.

A man notoriously close-mouthed, infamous for one-word answers, he is practising thinking in English. hard to do...  I haven't tried to think en français in a long time... je n'essaie pas penser en Français pour... or is it depuis?... forget it.  My French is shit.  Resting his hand on the grip of the pistol jammed in his belt, he laboriously retrieves all the English names for the weapon.  Revolver.  Six-shooter. Glock.  Side arm.  Equalizer.  Gun.  Firearm.  45.  Derringer?  Short gun.  Hog-leg.  Roscoe.  Peacemaker.  Colt.  Bren 805. Ha hahaha.  Bazooka.  Wait, is a bazooka even a gun?  Didn't Ma Ingalls in Little House have a pearl-handled revolver?  I bet it was pretty...   

[then brain conjures up this image]:

Air-gun.   

I still haven't finished that paintball post and I began it last summer.  I need to do that... sooner rather than later..   It is a difficult task to recall them all.  English is a stubborn balky tongue.  It definitely was for the Japanese boys...

I know.  EXHAUSTING.

And just like that, SPLAT!, I found myself aching to get out of the tub so that I could go downstairs and write.  Damn you, Calliope.  Let me bathe in peace.

Beginning of blog proper

Last July, I found myself agreeing to play Paintball.   My son coaxed, begged, pleaded, cajoled, coerced and implored me to join him on the battlefield.  I will admit to being curious about Paintball, and as I fancy myself a bit of a markswoman, I thought that I would be the coolest / dumbest Mum ever and tag along.  PLUS there would be opportunities to shoot my husband AND my son in the ass.  At the same time.

While I was full of trepidation, I recalled giving birth to both of my brats naturally, without crying or screaming, and it seemed to me that paintball couldn't possibly be worse than pushing a 9-pounder out of one's vagina.  And so, I grabbed my riot gear and headed for Flagswipe.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn't think that we would be playing in a Kabulesque landscape:

Not digging the dilapidated schoolbus or the creepy crosses...

I am afraid, very afraid...

Being the only woman on the playing field is a tough gig.  I felt like I had to put on a good show.  I wasn't going to let all that testosterone know that I was petrified, so I swaggered around, cocksure but crying on the inside.

After signing my waiver, putting on gloves, tying my shoelaces in DOUBLE KNOTS, getting acquainted with my gun, applying lipgloss (a girl's gotta look good on the battlefield), and slugging back a Redbull, I reluctantly donned my helmet.  

Here's yours truly, aka Athena, READY TO KICK some BOY and MAN-ASS:

And here's Company C making their best mean-faces:   

               

Hooligans.

What a malicious-looking bunch we are, some more than others.  I had no idea what I was in for, NO IDEA at all.

Having been educated on paintball safety and etiquette and adequately nourished and hydrated, we were ready to rampage.

We filed onto the playing field, and waited for the horn to blow, and that's when we ran willy-nilly in all directions.  I avoided the boys and chased after the men - cuz they were men, duh! - and men know what war is about.  ;-)

My heart was thudding in my chest like a jackhammer, and I felt like I was running for my life.  I was a fatter, older, uglier version of Katniss in the Hunger Games.

Out of breath from sprinting, I cowered in an old shack trying not to shit my spandex.  I hid behind blockades and walls, and burned-out vehicles, anything really, and tried to avoid being hit.  I don't think that I shot many paintballs that first round.  I was too busy trying not to hyperventilate.

The paintballs fly by ridiculously quickly and they spatter wildly, or they PING! sharply as they explode on metal.  Have a listen to this (ten-second) video.  The second part of it is bang-on :-)

The game ended before I knew it, and I was surprised to learn that I had a) made it out ALIVE, b) was unscathed, and c) had dry drawers.

I was happy that it was over, but I was still petrified.  I could feel adrenalin coursing through my body.  I hadn't been hit, but I was anticipating the pain and suffering that I would soon endure.  I wanted to get the first hit over with.  Would an exploding paintball feel like a bee sting?  A hard pinch?  A slap on bare skin?  The waiting was punishing.

The bush served as the setting for round two.  Lush and green and quiet, it might have been serene on another day.

We were divided into groups, our biceps wrapped in duct tape.  I preferred playing in the woods; I am a nature girl after all.  I felt much more at home in the trees than in dodgy shacks and rusted-out jeeps.

KAPLOOEY!  WHAMMO!

I had been hit!  I took it on the left shoulder, and I was surprised to find that the pain registered a mere 5 on a scale of 1 to 10:

What a show-off.  I am smiling here because (unbeknownst to me) I haven't felt real pain yet.

Things Begin to Turn Ugly, Including the Tone of This Post

Things began to sour at dusk.

One of the soccer hooligans had been hit point-blank in the belly and he wailed like a baby.  I went into Mum mode and gave him cookies and watermelon, and a bit of a hug.  Being hit at close range is very painful, and you are guaranteed to have some damage, i.e. a welt or a bloody bruise.  Because of this, you stay away from your enemies, and you respect the mercy rule.  (If you say Mercy, you won't get shot).

Paintball wounds:

I felt very sorry for this kid.  His bloody, lumpy bruise was angry red and enormous:

I was making out okay, injury-wise.  I had been hit a handful of times, but it didn't hurt too much.  A hot sting, some throbbing, a fade to dull pain.

During one of the last games of the evening, about five minutes in, I found myself in the unenviable position of being without ammo.

I adopted the "Mercy"pose, which looks like this:

I held my rifle above my head, and I walked off the field, confident that everyone knew that I was either injured or that I was out of ammunition.  This move is supposed to let you exit the field without incident.

I smiled as I passed my son, my French Student and one other miscreant - either my nephew or my son's bestie.  They were shooting away happily, and I felt like Mum of the year.  Who says that a Mum can't join her son on a battlefield?  As I strolled by, approximately forty feet away from the trio, one of them noticed me.  I watched as he said something to the others, swivelled the gun toward me and pointed it directly at me.  His comrades also turned toward me, and I felt a pang of anxiety.

Are they going to... - ????

POW! POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!

They were and they did.

The three of them shot at me CLOSE-RANGE (a no-no), when I had no ammo and was walking in the Mercy position (another no-no).  I was forced to run like my ass was on fire, which it was.  The first few shots hit me in the side, the kidney and the hip and it hurt like CRAZY.  Then they hit me in the butt!  Many times.  Before I realized it, I heard myself scream, (not proud),  "You little motherfuckers!"

Believe me when I tell you that getting hit in the ass, at close range, is agonizing.  I had bruises for a month.  I could NOT believe the pain.  Worse than the physical pain though, was my disbelief that my son and his cronies had attacked me like that.  Was this some paintball rite of initiation?  I asked my husband and my friends about that, and they assured me that it was not.  And so let me present you with this.  

WALL OF SHAME

Snakes in the grass are what those two are.

When I told my son how disappointed I was, and how he would not be punished because no manner of punishment could measure up to my disappointment, I think he was shocked.  I know that he was contrite and ashamed, and I hope that after reading this, he will also know that I have forgiven him.

In fact, after that evening, I was so hurt, disappointed, and furious, that I didn't discuss it with him again.  It took me a year just to write this post, and as I finish it up, I see that I am still bent out of shape about it.  Please don't tell me to get over it.  I am getting over it by writing about it.

If anyone reading this post thinks, "serves her right for playing with them" or "what did she expect?", I will say to you, keep your sexist thoughts to yourselves.  I expected to play with my son and his friends, not even considering that they would turn on me like they did.  When I objected loudly, and called them out, I was made to feel that I couldn't take a joke.  Well let me tell you that I can take a joke, and this incident WAS NOT FUCKING FUNNY.

Okay, enough venom from me.

Because I Don't Want to End On A Sour Note...

Happier times:  

Athena, Nathanimal, Richard, and Louis - our French student.  We are filthy, stinky and rainsoaked

The earth littered with exploded paintballs:  

A note on the Plantain at the top of this shot.  You can eat it in salads, or if you are suffering from a bug bite, you can masticate a leaf or two and spit it out directly onto the affected area and massage it in.  I have it on good authority that this provides instant re-leaf.  

 No one opted for the grenades, thank goodness.   We all had gloves (I used my gardening gloves from Costco), and they're necessary.  Getting hit on the hand stings like a bee-yotch.  I think I started off with the bare minimum of paintballs in my hopper, and I didn't require a refill the entire evening.  In fact, people helped themselves to my paintballs!  I took more of a "sit and back and wait for the best opportunity to hit that son of a gun" approach, I suppose.  I think I'd make a good sniper.  


The soccer hooligans checking out the landscape, planning their coup

Closeup of the mesh fence, designed so that stray paintballs can't exit the field

Gun and CO2 tank storage

A  closeup of the mud, post-rain.  It made for messy warfare

In the pavilion, getting ready to rumble 

You are probably wondering whether I will dare to play Paintball again.  The answer is yes.  Yes, I will.

Except next time, I will trust no one.

Face your life

Its pain

Its pleasure, 

Leave no path untaken.

                                                                                                           Neil Gaiman

Optional musical pairing:  The Ides of March by Iron Maiden

Addendum - Sunday, August 23rd

Someone delivered a copy of London Community News to me today, and either the deliveryperson or another individual strategically placed a poppy directly on top of the rolled-up paper, so that when I opened the mailbox, I couldn't miss it:

The poppy made me think.  Had the poppy deliverer read this post?  Did they want me to read the LCN?  (I did).  Had they read the current poem on the poetree? (Billy Collins' Another Reason Why I Don'T Keep A Gun In The House).  

Perhaps the delivery person was trying to draw my attention to this article in the paper:  Archery Tag.  It's like paintball, but it doesn't hurt and there are NO BRUISES.  A facility is opening in London in the fall.  Sign me up, Glen Gorman, sign me up!

I also like this article:  Kindness Meters.  I hope Lincoln McCardle makes it work.  

For the record, I proudly wear a poppy in October and November, although I should probably wear it year-round.  I am very thankful for all of the men, women and children who fought for my freedom.