BY STEVEN KASZAB
That is right folks, there is a ticking environmental time bomb possibly near you and it’s found in your local landfill. Please read this and don’t ignore it folks. Way back your community authorities did one of four things with its garbage, that is: bury it in landfill sites, send it to other locals far away from your community making this garbage their problem, or burning it. The fourth method was the cheapest, that of putting in on a boat and taking it out to the ocean, and if these people were competent unloading into the ocean while there was a tide going away from your community.
Then the Green Movement developed and most of the public realized we were damaging our: air, waterways and environment. Something had to be done. Local authorities looked at the most cost-effective ways, so they often did the same thing, but made the process look more high tech, with recyclable material being sold to various industries, but the majority of our garbage still goes to landfills. To make things even more difficult those global communities we shipped garbage to have been refusing to take our trash for various reasons. One reason was our efforts to clean and sector the garbage was not made and a hodgepodge of trash was sent to: India, China, Asia and Africa for them to go through.
“You can refuse what you do not need, reduce what you do need, reuse what you consume, recycle what you cannot reuse and compost the rest” Bea Johnson.”
North America has thousands of mismanaged, uncared for, aged landfills filled with everything from: used oil products, massive amounts of plastic, batteries and even radio-active material from long ago. Our scientists and local authorities have finally realized that hiding these materials and forgetting about them was an error of massive proportions:
- Micro plastics seep into water entering our plants and wildlife and infecting our drinking water.
- Oil products erode over hundreds of years, contaminating water and land with various chemicals.
- Metal and aluminum corrode creating harmful chemicals in our landscape.
All these items create massive amounts of toxic gases and fumes that threaten populations located near them. What to do? These items can be dug up and refined, but our political economic system will not take on the massive costs to do so. Look at how the City of Winnipeg reacted to information that two or more Aboriginal ladies’ bodies were buried in their landfill. The city/province took a long time to allot a few million dollars to look for these bodies. Now imagine the cost being a hundred-fold that. Our economic system has no problem using our environment, waterways and the air we breathe as a dumping ground for their trash and used products, but corporations’ morality and ethics are based on making money, not losing money by recycling their historic mistakes.
Local waterways, rivers and streams are getting more and more polluted, our wildlife dying off, and the coastline continually damaged by climate change too. A shared public-corporate responsibility cannot be devised as armies of corporate lawyers fight any attempt to clean up our mess.
Asia’s landmass is filled with our trash as well as theirs. They have gone to the point of burning trash or dropping it at night into the ocean. Chinese and Indian rivers are blackened by pollution and chemical waste. Do you want that to happen in your neighborhood? Do you? The very water that comes out of your home’s tap is laced with micro plastics and chemicals your waste management team cannot filter properly. It can be done, but it is costly. It could be a corporate responsibility, but you know, the army of lawyers are prepared to fight any attempt. We are being poisoned and no one is telling us.
