Garbage has been one of the major problems in cities ever since they were created. Storing the unwanted waste has always given us painful headaches and the problem has just gotten worse. Over consumption and industrialization, mixed with large population growth and limited space and overcrowded landfill sites have driven cities all over the world to seek new ways to remove their garbage. While most cities go for the traditional ways of bigger landfill sites, incineration, recycling and composting, Toronto’s politicians came up with one of the most creative ideas in history. Yes that’s right, we’re exporting our garbage to Michigan, United States. I’m sure that NAFTA wasn’t created for the purpose of sending garbage across the borders. It’s hard to believe that our country, the world’s second largest landmass with a population of only thirty million, would need to dump our trash into the backyards of our neighbour, a country with ten times the population and a much smaller landmass. It’s unbelievable that the city hall staff initiated this radical, unsustainable, and immoral plan to send garbage to Michigan. There are much better solutions such as incineration or composting that will cost less, take less time, and reduce the pollution from the hundreds of trucks hauling the garbage.

You don’t have to be a genius to see that this plan of hauling our garbage down to the United States is ridiculous and impractical. Everyday, the garbage from our city is being taken across hundreds kilometres by an army of trucks to the dump site in Michigan. For how long will we be able to maintain this army of gas guzzling, air polluting monsters? Meanwhile residents on the way are exposed not only to the pollution from our garbage but also to the damaging fumes of the trucks. The pollution from the trucks alone would match the pollution created by a new dump site or incinerator in Ontario. What gives us the rights to expose other people, hundreds of kilometres away, to our garbage? Why do we continue to ignore better solutions and continue to stubbornly send our garbage to Michigan?

The strict post-911 customs also creates massive barriers near the borders as each cargo of garbage is slowly scanned and checked for any anomalies, a procedure which costs us time and money. With this system of garbage removal, Michigan and the US have effectively strapped a leash around our necks. We have created a reliance on Michigan to store our garbage. Michigan knows that if they decide to close their borders to our garbage, we would be in tremendous trouble. Therefore, they can increase the price for us to send garbage and we would have no choice but comply. What happened to Canada being a sovereign nation? Should we risk our sovereignty to solve this garbage problem?

Toronto could have gone with the new super clean incinerators that produce only a minimal amount of harmful leftovers which can be easily stored in to a land fill site. These new incinerators produce much less harmful chemicals than the ones in the past and are capable of converting the garbage into energy.  They are able to reduce the volume of the garbage going into landfills by 90% meanwhile giving us a much needed boost in energy generation. It will greatly reduce the size of our landfills and create much less pollution than hundreds of trucks rumbling down the highways to Michigan each and every day.

Another approach for Toronto is to follow in the steps of Edmonton, which had similar problems a couple of years ago. Edmonton, instead of coming up with incredulous ideas, hired experts from around the world to help work out intuitive solutions. Now their problems with garbage have disappeared and they have one of the best recycling and composting systems in the world. Why can’t we do the same? What makes Edmontonians better than us? Recycling and composting can divert over 50% of Toronto’s waste if used effectively, and the composted products are rich nutrient soil which can be resold or reused to grow plants that heal our environment. It’s a genius idea that kills two birds with one stone without doing any damage to the environment.

The sooner the bigots in the city hall realize the tragedies of the current situation, the sooner we will be able to create a better solution. We need to quickly initiate other strategies such as incineration or composting because it’s clear that sending garbage to Michigan is an unsustainable system. Although building incineration or composting plants take time, we must start now because Michigan’s leash is slowly tightening around our necks. As the citizens of this city and its surrounding areas, we must stand up and take this challenge to solve this garbage problem, so the future generations will not have to deal with this headache, and if other cities like Edmonton can do it, then so can we!