Blue-Box Battles

Back on Feb 03, 2007 John Goddard, staff reporter for the Toronto Star wrote about "… a move that reveals how wasteful the blue box system has been"

I've said for a long time that the blue box recycling program is one of the worst things inflicted on our environment. It encourages the myth that we are being good (ecological) citizens as long as we sort our materials as we lug them to the curb.

Wrong!

The trick is not to be carrying bins to the curb in the first place!

"The new program will prevent 80 million bottles from going straight to landfill", the paper says the government estimates. No-one says over what period. I could assume a year. Say 4 million people in the catchment area, half of them legal drinking age. That would be 40 bottles per person per year, roughly one a week.

The paper says that the Premier " … means that bottles that customers have for years been carrying to the curb in blue boxes, often after rinsing and soaking the labels off them, have too often ended up as waste." Why are we surprised.

"In parts of the province, although not Toronto, blue box glass goes straight to landfill as though it had been tossed straight into the trash.". No source is given for this quotation.

The good news is that all these negative quotes which correctly surround the Blue Box program may cause people to start thinking about alternatives to the Blue Box fiasco, such as re-using containers. Or even not purchasing them in the first place.

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