Remember the garbage strikes of 1981 and 1997 in Vancouver?
It felt like we were going to be overtaken by the bags and accompanying rats that lined the streets.
That was the first time I felt anxiety over trash. My kid mind imagined drowning in refuse.
Yuck.
But like most of my generation, I didn’t fully embrace recycling until the 1990s when my children came home from school and told me I should help save the earth. There’s some mom guilt right there.
We got blue boxes, and soon recycling — and later composting — became a regular routine, though truth be told I gripe about having to rinse the containers, dump the kitchen waste and clean the organics tote.
[Wipes brow self righteously at the burden of being a ‘good person.’]
Until recently, I gave little thought to what happened after I put the blue box at the end of the driveway to be picked up.
Then countries like the Philippines stopped taking our recyclables.
Turns out, Canadians were never recycling everything. We were shifting our problem onto others.
Now I feel a little conflicted about the recycling system we are all a part of here.
We actually do very little compared to what we could.
In researching the countries with the best recycling programs — Austria, Germany, South Korea — what stands out is the work individual residents are willing to do.
Though Japan is not a top recycler, in the northeastern town of Kamikatsu, residents sort their trash into 45 separate categories.
Forty-five.
And I complain about rinsing a few jars.
Recently, I rode my bike out to the landfill to see the vertical expansion that’s underway. It looks pretty cool as an engineering feat but also gave me a stomachache.
Our trash towers above us.
Drop off recycling at the GFL depot these days and you see the backlog of our recycling waste.
In B.C., 40 per cent of plastic is used only once, according to government stats.
Of course, individuals should not bear the whole brunt of this issue. Every company that creates something should be required to have an end of life plan.
And it is a positive step that more communities like Squamish are restricting single-use plastics.
Last week, the mayors of Squamish, Victoria, Tofino, and Rossland, whose communities have all adopted or are adopting single-use plastic restrictions, put out a joint statement supporting the province’s consultation process on a plastics policy.
But we all need to do more because, even if corporations and governments do their part, the big shift has to happen in our homes and minds.
Perhaps consumers need to be charged a commodity fee for our recyclables, like a tipping fee at the landfill.
We can be an entitled lot who expect a gold star for throwing our coffee container in the blue bin, not a charge for it.
But we can’t keep shifting our problems onto others forever.
Until Sept. 18 at 4 p.m., the province is seeking the public’s input on plastics recycling.
Go to cleanbc.gov.bc.ca/plastics and lend your voice to the conversation about what you are willing to do to cut the trash.
