SHIPPING RECYCLING TO TORONTO MEANS MUSKOKA BLUE BOX CONTENTS MAY END UP OFFSHORE OR IN AN OCEAN
Lois Cooper | MuskokaTODAY.com OPINION
MUSKOKA — The District of Muskoka says the changes to our waste system on Nov. 7 are: “Working together towards a better waste system for Muskoka.”
Yet it includes trucking all of our recycling (blue boxes) to Toronto for sorting and whatever comes next.
How is trucking our recycling to Toronto a better system?
How does that help the environment?
The district declared a climate emergency in 2020, promising to look at every decision through that lens.
What about job losses in Muskoka?
Previously under Muskoka Containerized Services, owned by the late Bracebridge mayor and district councillor Don Coates, at the beginning of recycling in Muskoka the material was sorted at a plant in Bracebridge for decades.
Now we are shipping our recycled waste material to Toronto. Where its unusable will quite likely be sold to poor countries and much of it ending up in the ocean — killing ocean life — or be burned killing humans with air pollution.
If we have a conscience this should push us to do better at dealing with our waste – and refuse to pass it on to others.
In a May 14, 2022 Toronto Star story stats show only 1% of flexible plastics and 21% of rigid plastics are recycled after being collected.
The rest is somewhere killing something.
We pretend that we are recycling.
We need to make a commitment to deal with our own waste.
It is the biggest problem facing Muskoka.
Do we keep our plastic until science develops a way to re-use it safely?
That sounds reasonable — until the other shoe drops and we find that there is only one active landfill site in all of Muskoka — which includes Georgian Bay, Lake of Bays, Muskoka Lakes, Huntsville, Bracebridge and Gravenhurst — taking all the garbage in the district.
In an email, the district confirmed: “The only location where the district has active landfilling operations (burying waste) is our Rosewarne landfill in Bracebridge. All garbage received at other facilities (depots or transfer stations) is transferred to Rosewarne for disposal.”
How did we get here?
Bad planning!
Eighty per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions in Muskoka come from vehicles.
Adding trucks carrying all of our garbage to one site and carrying our recycling to Toronto is irresponsible.
We must do better. We must force our leaders to look through the climate emergency lens at all times.
That means higher taxes and it means our leaders must be willing to put those higher taxes in place.
We must be willing to pay the price to deal with the waste we produce.
To pay for the lifestyle we have.
We are so very lucky to live in Central Ontario where we suffer relatively little from the climate crisis.
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