'That Smell'? Part Three

'Garbage in, garbage out.'

It's an early computer programming maxim, but it has many applications (sorry) in this modern world of ours.

If you ingest more calories than you expend, you have to deal with ridding yourself of the excess.

If you spend more than you earn, you have to deal with the debt.

If you purchase goods with what can reasonably be referred to as 'excessive packaging', then you have nobody to blame when it comes time to processing the waste.

By the same token, if you're hung up on 'buying things', if you're addicted to a materialistic, acquisitional cultural mindset (I've cried when the calls have gone up for people to 'Consume! Consume! Consume! Save our economy! Generate jobs for your neighbours! Spend! Purchase! Obtain!' by so many North American leaders.), then you're going to have rubbish to attend to.

Some people seem to see their part in the whole 'Garbage, Recycling, Composting' discussion as merely doing what's been asked of them and separating their refuse into the proper containers.

In fact, what's just as important is the notion of being mindful of product packaging.

Or what was required to bring it to market. 

Or whether the product is needed at all.

For me, what this all comes down to is being aware of cause-and-effect. Understanding not just about what's in front of you on the shelf, or on the showroom floor, but what it's taken to get these purchasables to market.

Many people in Hamilton do 'get it'. Many do understand that due consideration needs to be afforded to our 'footprints'. And I suppose what we really need...more than any initiatives coming out of City Hall...is have more discussion, to have more 'due influence' at play within our citizenry.

So that the idea of purchasing more consciously becomes our default.

So that people don't see watering their lawns...or the disposal of its 'crop'...as some inalienable right, no matter how bizarre a practice it is.

So that people see bottled water for the travesty it is.

Once again, we need more dialogue. More discourse. On a basic level. Curbside chats. Town halls. Neighbour seminars. Street salons. 

Mostly because I do believe we can 'talk' our way out of this one. As long as it's an external discussion, and not some mindless internal monologue. 

M Adrian Brassington