Garbage strike survival ideas from a six-year-old

Like most parents, I'm frequently surprised by my kid. He's six years old and, well, to be perfectly honest, he often has better ideas than I do.

When we got home from school tonight, there was a message from a radio station that had read my post, 10 ways to survive a garbage strike. This meant that I had to start by explaining what a strike is. Thankfully, he's a smart kid. Probably also helped that we read him Click, Clack, Moo when he was little.

I asked him if he had suggestions to add to the list. Of course he did.

"I would just not use a lot of things," he said. Sensible. What would he give up? "Milk."

"Okay," I replied. "That might help, but the strike might last for weeks. You probably need milk. Lets put that on a list of 'essentials' that we can't give up." I suggested buying milk in bags instead of cartons because of the smaller volume of waste (we'd have to freeze some bags, since we don't go through too much."

Naturally, he started talking about how we could re-use the bags as garbage bags. After the strike ends, that is. (If there is a garbage strike in Toronto, that is. We'll know all too soon.)

"What else could we use less of?" I asked. He pointed at the shampoo. I conceded that we could probably be more careful about the amount we use, and proceded to wash his hair.

Then I got up to let him play in the water for a bit.

"Wait!" he called. "I've got more ideas."

I got a pad and pen and sat down on the toilet to take dictation from a six-year-old pontificating from the bath.

"If you ever get a cardboard box, turn it into something else, like a little town with a train track in it."

Right. Creative, but not necessarily a way to deal with thousands of tons of trash. Still, it could make a fun weekend project, so I'm not going to argue.

That's when he really surprised me: "Eat less candy, because that means fewer candy wrappers."

Somehow I doubt his friends will be cheering for that one.

In the meantime, I'm going to use his bath water to help the tomatoes grow and tuck my creative thinker into bed. Then I'm going to sit down and cross my fingers that the outside workers and City Hall can find enough common ground to make everyone happy.

10 ways to survive a garbage strike

There's a serious chance that my city, Toronto, will have a major garbage strike this summer. The last one was in 2002. It was a long, smelly one in the middle of a hot summer. Windsor is in the midst of a very long one.

Garbage strikes are more than an inconvenience, they're a health hazard. But they're also a good time to take stock of what we're throwing out and look for ways to clean up our act. With that in mind, here are some tips on surviving a garbage strike. What ideas do you have? I rent part of a house with a yard, so I'm particularly interested in hearing how these strikes affect people in high-rise apartments. Let's turn the comments section here into a running list of ideas on how to beat the stink!

1. Stop eating meat.
This is easier for the vegetarians, and there's are good reasons why most of us should cut our meat consumption, anyway. But in a strike it's a really good idea. Rotting meat scraps are some of the smelliest stuff we throw away. They're also the most likely to attract rats and create a genuine health hazard.

2. Get composting.
If you have a back yard, get a composter. In Toronto, the city sells them for $15. We're getting a second one because of the volume of garden and rabbit-related organic matter we produce. The first one has, in the past year, consumed enough material to fill many garbage bags. In apartments, consider vermiculure. That is, the fine art of worm composting. If you have kids, they'll love you for it.

3. Freeze!
For a short strike, put the smelly stuff in plastic bags (you may have to conveniently forget your cloth shopping bags one day to get some), tie them up and toss them in the freezer. You could save a little energy too, as food scraps have greater thermal mass than air, and so will hold the cold better.

4. Time for cloth.
As a parent, I washed a lot of cloth diapers. It's not that horrible an experience. They are a significant expense, though, so plan for it to be a long-term solution. In Toronto, disposable diapers can go in the Green Bin for composting. But in a garbage strike, they're going to get ripe awfully fast. I'd rather do an extra load of diapers every day or two than have a mountain of dirty disposables sitting in my living room! (Or, if laundry facilities are inconvenient or far away, hire a diaper service to do the washing for you.)

5. Reduce.
Easy to do. Look for products with less packaging. Buy fruit loose and avoid those clamshell containers - they're not recyclable in my city, anyway. Plastics are relatively easy to store, as they won't start to smell, but all the same, they're some of the bulkiest stuff to go in the bin.

6. Re-use.
A lot of our "waste" is quite usable. A lot of house-related stuff, from the end of a roll of tar paper to 2x4s and even toilets, can find a new home through places such as Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store. There are also places to bring partial cans of paint (because really, how long could you live with the beige your landlord painted all the walls?), furniture (checked out Value Village or Goodwill lately?), and so forth.

7. Double-bag.
If you can't do anything but throw something potentially stinky away, double-bag it. That will help keep the smell down and help prevent rodents from attacking the trash.

8. Postpone.
Now might not be the time to clear last year's freezer-burned Thanksgiving leftovers out of the freezer. You might also want to hold off on projects likely to create a lot of waste.

9. Use the phone book.
Find the numbers for by-law enforcement officers who handle illegal dumping. Garbage strikes lead people to do some stupid things, like toss their trash into local ravines. This is a dangerous, messy and downright uncivilized thing to do. If you see it happen, call the authorities. Write down the license plate number of the perpetrator.

10. Get out of town.
Yes, a garbage strike is a good time to go on holiday. You won't build a pile of waste in your backyard and you won't have to endure the stench of the heap being stored at the local park. Grab a tend, catch a train up to a nice provincial park and do some backpacking. Or take a bus up to the beach. If you're driving, maybe go visit your uncle's farm...and ask if you can make use of one or two of the garbage tags for his municipal pickup while you're at it.

While you're out in the country, take a deep breath, enjoy the clean air and try to remember the really crappy days that some freezing guy came and took away your stinky old diapers, turned a blind eye to that extra bag you'd set out, or loaded your old couch into the truck without complaint. And try to remember that, one day, the strike will end.

In the meantime, add your ideas in the comments section below.

How (and why) to fix a toaster

A few months ago, a friend's coffee grinder broke. Coffee grinders, like toasters and other small appliances, are often cheapter to throw away and replace than to repair. But think about the waste.

If you just don't like your small appliance anymore, or are replacing it because you need a new function (like a timer or auto shutoff on a coffee maker), then there are plenty of places to take working appliances, clothes, furniture and all sorts of household goods for re-use. And, as we all know, it's better to re-use most items than to recycle them. The city I live in, Toronto, has a web page full of links for such wonderful places.

Sadly, a lot of working appliances and electronics do end up going to landfills. These range from ugly old toasters to last year's cell phones. In 2000/2001, Toronto studied the composition of its garbage. According to a six-week sampling of 80 single-family households, goods such as appliances, small appliances, electronics and furniture accounted for 12 percent of waste. That's 116 kg per household per year. In those six weeks, the 80 households dumped 67 kilograms of small appliances and electronics. That's equivalent to almost a toaster for every second household in just six weeks!

This is one area where, according to the study, apartment-dwellers fare better. The study also looked at 826 households in multi-unit dwellings. The average apartment only tossed the equivalent of 4 kg of small appliances or electronics per year.

But still, even if every Torontonian threw away only as much as the residents of a typical apartment, we'd be looking at about 4 million kilograms of small appliances and electronics in the garbage every year. That's about 2 million two-slice toasters.

So, what can we do? In some cases, we can fix 'em.

My friend pointed me to a nifty site, fixitclub.com. It has instructions on maintenance and repair of all sorts of things, particularly small appliances like toasters and coffee grinders.

Me, I like books, so I'm always on the lookout for a good book that'll guide me through a problem. Sadly, there are few books on the market today that instruct people on small appliance repair.

One that does cover some small appliances in a simple, straightforward way is How to Fix Everything for Dummies. It covers the basics and is easy to follow. It does not, contrary to its title, include instructions on how to fix everything. It does have instructions on fixing lots of things, from simple household repairs to small appliances. The small appliances section is brief, but does cover things like the upright vacuum, iron and food processor. It does not actually tell you how to repair these things, generally. Instead, it covers what I would call maintenance. That is, how to take apart and clean them, and some simple adjustments that'll give 'em a longer life. It also covers large appliances, heating and air conditioning systems, and lots of other household concerns. And at about $25 (Canadian), it's not a major investment.

Small appliances are a concern because they're bulky items to send to landfill. But the real danger is electronics. These contain many components that will leach dangerous heavy metals. Like small appliances, they're often less expensive to replace than to repair. Or at least so it seems.

If we factored in the cost of safely disposing of, or recycling, the components of most electronics, repairing them would be a much more cost-effective proposition. Right now, that cost is borne by the general public. My taxes pay for your waste. Not fair.

More often, though, nobody is paying for proper disposal. Cell phones, printers, old computers, they all too often are just tossed into a landfill. Future generations will end up paying through the nose for expensive cleanup projects as water and soil become contaminated. I'm a father. I don't want that legacy for my son.

What I would like to see is something called "Extended Producer Responsibility." That's a system in which manufacturers are responsible for their products, even after they've been sold to a consumer. When their life is done, the products go back to the manufacturers (or the manufacturers pay for proper recycling or disposal). Apply the idea to packaging, and you can bet we'll see a lot less of those hard-to-open, non-recyclable plastic packages on toys and video games. (If you're not sure what's recyclable and live in Toronto, see my post here.)

In the meantime, lots of electronic devices can be repaired. Some can be fixed by an average lay person. Most will require some legitimate training in electronics. I thought I'd hit paydirt when I found Troubleshooting and Repairing Consumer Electronics Without a Schematic. It's writtin in plain language! I understand most of it! Unfortunately, to actually make use of it would require a couple years of education that I'm sadly lacking. So, if anyone in my neighbourhood wants to field test my copy, you're welcome to it. Just promise that you'll repair at least one radio, VCR, television or DVD player and keep it out of a landfill.

Water on the brain

Detail from a mural at Bridgepoint Health,
on the edge of the Don River, Canada's most polluted river.
Photo by Craig Saunders

I've been thinking about water lately. Every time I shower, or pull the plug on my son's bath, I think about all the water going down the drain. In a week, hundreds of gallons of fairly clean greywater flows from my house into the city's wastewater system. It doesn't need to.

My city has more than 9,000 kilometres of sewers connecting the homes of a few million people. The wastewater generally flows downhill to the lake, but sometimes must be pumped uphill at one of 45 pumping stations. The more we flush, the more electricity gets used to pump that waste. Then there's a 10.5-hour treatment process at the end.

That process takes a lot of energy. more than 190 million kilowatthours. Water systems are one of the biggest parts of any city's energy bill, and because of that, one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. There's a lot a city can do, from replacing leaky old pipes to installing biogas systems to use some of the energy stored in all that poop-filled water. Homeowners can fix leaky faucets, take showers instead of baths, and really, do you need to take a full shower every day? Wouldn't a sponge bath in the sink (using just a few litres of water) suffice some days?

Every time I pull the plug on the bathtub, I think about all that water going down the drain. It's good water, with quite a few nutrients in it thanks to the soap. Then I think about my garden, a few hundred square feet of vegetables (well, it will be once the snow melts). Why not use the greywater on the garden?

I'm happy to take buckets out to the garden. I used to do this in London. But my garden paths are dirty, and I'd have to walk back and forth across the carpet in my bedroom countless times. The obvious solution is some sort of a water barrel on the back porch. Then I could carry buckets to fill it, then go outside and do the watering without tracking dirt throughout the house.

But where to get a suitable barrel? I was wondering about this, and today it came to me. The city just delivered new garbage bins. We have to use these official bins if we want our rubbish collected. That means the big, old plastic bin we had been using is just sitting at the side of the house. If the upstairs neighbours don't object, I'll put it on the back deck and use it for greywater. Now I just need to figure out some sort of spigot system for the bottom.

Then I'll have a great greywatering system for my garden. My veg will love it, it will reduce the amount of relatively clean water the city will have to treat, and it will reduce the amount of water they need to pump into the system, since I'll be using less municipal water for the garden. A win-win-win situation.

Now I just have to wait until the snow melts.

More trash talk

First of all, I must commend the City of Toronto for its quick response. I left a message with one of the project communicators for the new garbage program, and she called me back within an hour. When I'm not calling from a major newspaper, that's a pretty fast response.

She explained the program and pricing very well and cleared up some of the concerns I raised in yesterday's post. But I'm still not convinced that the system is universally fair and that it doesn't discriminate against people who live in small multi-family buildings (that is, places with 2-8 apartments... the city has a different program for what it calls "multi-unit" dwellings, which are larger apartment blocks).

First, the garbage fee is not being applied to the water bill, it will be part of a new water and waste bill. Still a lousy deal for tenants who pay for all their utilities, but I recognize that a minority of people who live in apartments pay their water bills directly. Then again, isn't fair treatment of a minority one of those principles we're supposed to consider as a society?

Okay, so each building pays for garbage collection through its property taxes. Under the new system, each building will instead pay a garbage fee, based on the size of its container. That fee is given a $209 rebate annually. Why $209? Because it's the average amount paid for garbage collection in the city.

Where this breaks down, from my perspective, is that not all buildings are equal. Buildings with two or three apartments often have higher assessments and pay higher taxes. Which would mean that the tenants will, under the new system, end up paying for garbage collection twice. Once with the new fee and again because the $209 rebate won't fully offset the difference that they pay indirectly through property taxes.

Each building gets the $209 rebate once, no matter how many units there are, no matter how many families live there, no matter how many bins they have (you can have more bins, you just pay more).

The city encourages "bin sharing" to avoid extra fees. That's a good idea, and the reason why I'll be sharing the second-smallest bin with my neighbours. That bin will cost us $39/year after the rebate. But if I didn't have to share with my neighbours, I could use a bin half that size... no, I wouldn't pay half as much ($19.50), but instead would get a $10 rebate.

If I lived in the single-family house next door and generated the same amount of waste as I do now, I'd be getting a rebate. So would my neighbours.

So I have yet to get an explanation that really makes clear how this system is in the least bit a fair one. If one of the experts from the City of Toronto is reading, please do use the comments section to set me straight, if I've got this all wrong. I'd rather discover that I'm wrong than feel that the city isn't treating tenants in small buildings fairly.

How Toronto's new garbage plan discriminates against renters

On November 1, 2008, a new garbage collection system came into force in Toronto. It’s part of a noble plan to reduce the amount of material going to landfill. Unfortunately, its implementation has been clumsy, and the program is highly discriminatory toward people who rent apartments in small buildings.

The city is sending out new garbage bins to all the buildings it collects waste from at curbside. For a single-family dwelling, it’s a sensible program. Get a small bin and you get small rebate. Get a larger bin, and you pay an annual fee, presumably because you’re sending more material to landfill.

Unfortunately, the city is charging based on the amount per building, not per residence. So, if the two single-family houses next door each generate the equivalent of one bag of garbage per collection (the volume of the smallest bin), they each get a rebate on their water bill. However, I live in a two-unit building and we are allowed one bin for the building. As a result, if each apartment generates one bag per collection, we have to pay a fee. In other words, the city will be charging each residence in my building a fee while giving a rebate to other residences on the same street that generate the same amount of waste.

This is patently unfair, and clearly discriminatory toward multi-unit dwellings. And, it’s worth pointing out, multi-unit dwellings tend to be more energy efficient and generally better for the environment. The city should be rewarding multi-unit dwellers, not punishing them.

But there’s one other problem with the new program. The rebates or charges are applied to the building’s water bill, not the property tax bill. Traditionally, charges relating to solid waste management are part of property taxes. In Canada, property taxes are usually paid by the landlord. Utility bills, on the other hand, are often paid directly by tenants. Shifting the cost of garbage collection to a utility bill means that, in many cases, it will be shifted to a cost borne directly by the tenants. And that amounts to a rent hike in addition to any allowable annual rent increase a landlord may charge.

That, and it’s a little hard to understand what garbage collection has to do with water and sewage.

Green Tenant will be seeking answers from city officials. Don’t turn to the pink tag line for help, as it’s just a call centre and has no answers. Do call them (416-392-2467) if you haven’t received a bin or pink collection tags, but be prepared for a very long wait. I was on hold for more than 30 minutes this morning.