One person-week of compost

Nothing like a garbage strike to make you aware of just how much trash you generate.

That bag contains about one person-week of eggshells, teabags, bell pepper stems, carrot shavings, mushroom stems, wilted spinach and the ends of scallions. (Note the 500 mL bottle for scale) Instead of rotting away with the rest of my trash, attracting fruit flies, I kept it separate and dumped it into a compost heap in the community gardens on W.6th near Burrard.

Granted, I'm lucky enough to live in walking distance of such a compost dump. (And I'd probably be less enthusiastic if I had to walk three blocks in November rain to dispose of the stuff instead of a comfortably warm August evening.) I'm even luckier to live in a building with private trash collection, but I've been using the blue recycling bins from the building down the alley to get red of cardboard, newspaper, glass and metal, all of which have been accumulating over the strike.

It seems increasingly clear to me that everything from personal habits to civic planning to industry regulation will have to change to cut down on the trash we generate, both in terms of quantity and of type. There's still no municipal program for recycling batteries. And why does IGA give customers a $0.03 discount for reusing bags instead of penalizing people who do use plastic bags?