Another Reason to Reduce

It seems like lately I've been coming across all sorts of reasons to reduce our garbage. First there was the fact that for every dollar spent, half a litre of petroleum is consumed. Now we're starting to see the impact of not collecting garbage on a daily basis for the city of Toronto. For those of you who aren't aware, Toronto's city workers are on strike, and that includes the waste disposal workers. The strike started on June 22 and it didn't take long for tension to mount. It's also not taking long for piles of garbage to show up anywhere and everywhere. Below is a picture by erinleah off of flickr.



Politicians are saying that they won't rush in to end Toronto's garbage strike, so it'll be interesting to see whether Torontonians will save their garbage, use the depots set up around the city, or dump anywhere they won't be caught. I'm sure that new flickr photos will be appearing daily chronicling the city streets. One reason the strike won't be legislated back to work is that Windsor has been dealing with a garbage strike for 11 weeks now. How are they dealing? One Windsor man has found that private disposal facilities are inexpensive and well run.

If my city's garbage collection went on strike, I think the worst impact for me would be the compost, especially in a hot summer! We have two large compost containers, and I'm guessing it would take 6-8 weeks to fill them both (maybe a little longer if I can get some no-waste weeks going for Food Waste Fridays). Our four recycling containers would fill up faster, but we could always use some cardboard boxes for the masses of junk mail and flyers we receive, plus, now that I've given up pop that should remove a lot of cans and cardboard from our recycling. Our one garbage can should last us 6-8 weeks of normal use as well. If I knew I was about to be involved in a long garbage strike, I might look into backyard composting or vermicomposting; other than that I think I could last at least two to three months before I had to find something to do with my garbage/recycling. What impact would a garbage strike have on your lifestyle?