What's in your Toilet?

Here's a quick quiz... which of the following items do you flush down your toilet?

• toilet paper
• human waste (either end)
• pet waste unless your cat can squat on the toilet seat and go directly into the toilet bowl...
  
• diapers
• "flushable" wipes
• baby wipes
• syringes
• expired medication
• tampons - fun fact - plumbers call them "sewer mice"...
  
• tampon applicators
• feminine hygiene pads
• condoms
• paper towel
• cosmetic wipes
• dental floss
• contact lenses
• cotton swabs a.k.a. q-tips
• cotton balls
  
• facial tissue a.k.a. kleenex
• razors
• teddy bears and/or toy cars
  
• cigarette butts
• hair
• food - no matter how soft it is...
  
• chewing gum
• dead animals (e.g. goldfish, gerbils, etc)
  
• bleach
• band-aids
• paint
• masks
• gloves
  

I know... some of those things are just plain weird but... they are on the list because someone, somewhere, sometime has flushed exactly those items down a toilet.. Here's the rub... only the top two items belong down a toilet. None of the other things should ever, ever be flushed down a toilet.

Not my pic- just some fluffy sewer mice (tampons) hauled out pipes

Why not? Ohhh... sooo many reasons. Let me tell you about the time in Calgary when one of the toilets in our condo backed up. We had to call in a plumber which is not cheap. He removed the toilet and put a big long snake thing down the line and then started hauling all sorts of interesting things back up. Like sewer mice... a.k.a. used tampons.

We got quite a lecture from him about tampons being most definitely not flushable. Oh sure... technically they are flushable... I mean, you can drop them in the toilet bowl and push the lever and swoooshhhh... they disappear. But... they don't always go very far. Tampons should never, ever be flushed down a toilet. Unless you want an expensive male plumber with low-riding pants to give you a lecture on tampons while fishing your used ones out of your sewer stack. Your choice...

Now... it's not just tampons that can be fished out of your clogged sewer line... any one of the things on that list (other than human waste and toilet paper) could cause a clog in the pipes. Toilet paper is designed to decompose quickly once it's flushed away. Other paper products, like tissues and paper towel, while they might look dissolvable... are not.

But... we're not done yet. Because what goes down the other drains in your house also plays a role in the condition of your pipes.

Also not my pic... the sink I had to deal with was worse

Let's talk about cooking grease/oil/fat. We owned a rental duplex a few years ago... and one day, one of the tenants called me and said that their kitchen sink was not draining. Could I come over and fix it?

Knowing how expensive plumbers are (see story above)... I grabbed a plunger and a few other tools and trotted over.

They had a double sink... both sides of which were completely, utterly full of greasy water. I did a bit of research and learned that if you want to use the plunger on a double sink, you need to make sure the drain plug is in place in the other sink. Which meant I had to roll up my sleeves and stick my arm into a disgusting greasy morass... but I did it. And then plunged the other sink and... swoosh... it eventually all went away. From one sink. I had to then pull the plug on the other sink and it too cleared.

Again... not my pic... and my hair snake was worse

I then had a bit of a conversation with our tenants about what should and should not be poured down a sink drain. Grease/fat/oil is a definite no-no. I told him that we pour ours into either empty glass jars (like a pickle jar) and/or empty milk cartons. We don't just pour off excess grease from the frying pan... we then wipe it with a paper towel and add that to the green bin container (our municipal green bin takes any food/cooking waste).

And then... of course... we have the bathroom sink and tub drains. Here's a few tips... If you are one of those people who does coconut oil pulling (rinse your mouth with coconut oil), please, please, do not spit that stuff down the bathroom sink. It clogs the pipes up horribly.

Also... don't trim your hair over the sink... hair takes forever to decay (like decades... maybe centuries). Use one of those mesh traps for your bathroom sink and/or tub drains.

Pipe partially clogged with grease

Another story... moved into an apartment back in 2000. Great little place but the bathtub was horribly slow to drain. It didn't have one of those built-in drain plugs so I was able to reach down in there and I started pulling on some bits of hair that were caught on the inside cross-hatching of the drain. And it kept coming and coming... I pulled over 12 inches of a massive hair clump out of that drain. Apparently the previous female tenant had long hair... It was disgusting and I almost barfed my cookies. Afterwards, our tub drained beautifully...

All of this is a prelude to the real story... fatbergs. Have you heard of them? They are seriously gross.

Imagine a 250 metre long mass of hardened, congealed fat/oil/grease mushed together with condoms, diapers, "flushable" wipes, tampons, syringes, etc... in the sewer lines of London. Weighing it at 130 tonnes... stinking like "rotting meat mixed with the odour of a smelly toilet". Having to be chipped and chiseled and shoveled out by city workers dressed in hazmat suits over the course of nine weeks. That was the Whitechapel Fatberg of 2017.

Whitechapel Fatberg - 2017

FOGs (fat/oil/grease) don't just clog the pipes of our houses... they clog the pipes under our city streets. And they are extremely expensive to clean out. Not only that... they lead to sewage backups which are messy, expensive and very damaging to the environment. Think raw sewage (all that lovely human waste combined with toxic bacteria like E. coli and Listeria) backing up into your basement, flowing down the street into streams and seeping into the groundwater.

Now... it's not just household grease that's the issue... fast food restaurants produce an inordinate amount of cooking grease and the biggest fatbergs are, not surprisingly, found near areas rich with fast-food places. There are grease traps which can help to capture most of the cooking grease from these restaurants but they also need to be maintained and cleaned regularly... which doesn't always happen.

All of this means that cities spend millions of dollars every year cleaning up clogged pipes and sewer lines of fatbergs, not to mention sewage overflows. Which gets pushed back to the taxpayer... you and me. So... why not help prevent fatbergs in our sewers... and protect your own household drain pipes, by not tossing/pouring/spitting/dropping into your sinks/bathtubs/showers/toilets...

The Flushable Trinity...

P.S. During the creation of this blog, a household conversation ensued about vomit. Does it belong in the toilet or not? Is it "flushable"? In a good way? The answer seems to be "yes". I couldn't find it on any "unflushables" list... so readers are free to commune with their porcelain bowl whenever the need arises.

For those interested... there's a short little video put out by Metro Vancouver that has a humourous look at fatbergs...

The Guardian - Fighting Fatbergs: This is now a Huge Environmental Issue", 2019

CBC - Those COVID-19 masks, gloves and wipes we're all using are polluting land and sea, 2020

A biocide by any other name still kills as bitterly...

A couple of years ago, we had some new neighbours move into the rental next door. A young couple with two children and the grandmother. They had moved to the Island from the Okanagan because the husband was on the list for a kidney transplant. Yup, he was in Stage 4 kidney failure. And only in his mid-30s. What the heck? Turns out, he was a landscaper by trade and for years had been spraying pesticides and herbicides as part of his job.

In case you missed it, Monsanto, the makers of Roundup, have a lost a series of court cases in recent years. In 2019, they were ordered to pay over $2,000,000,000 to a couple you contracted non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (cancer) after using Roundup for over 30 years. And they aren't the only ones... there are thousands of court cases coming down the pipeline. **Breaking News*** On June 25, 2020, Bayer (the owner of Monsanto) agreed to pay almost $11,000,000,000 to settle cancer claims against its weedkillers.

Now, this isn't a "beatup Roundup" blog but a general diatribe against all biocides - herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and pesticides. Call them what you will... they are deadly... not just to humans but also to every living thing in the immediate vicinity of their path.

Dandelions in the lawn? Just spray Roundup... kill the dandelion and... what else? Worms, beetles, bees, and who knows how many other little critters that live in the soil. For example, Roundup kills beneficial microbes that fix nitrogen in the soil. Kill those microbes and any plants that try to get established will struggle because they aren't getting the nitrogen they need... and, in their weakened state, they are more susceptible to plant pathogens that occur naturally in the soil. Because, while we might like to think that the herbicide is just going to affect the plant... it doesn't. Poison is poison... whether it be for plants or insects. And if the earthworms get sick because of some herbicide... what does that then do to the robins who eat the earthworms? Or to any bird that eats an insect...

Our entire ecosystem is built on dirt/soil/earth, but we tend to treat it with casual disregard... and no wonder.

None of those three words bring up "good" associations... dirty magazines... the dog soiled the carpet... their earthy humour (i.e. vulgar). We might value forests and oceans and bears and salmon... but who values the soil?

And yet without healthy soil... we are toast. Seriously. And yet... every day, millions of litres of biocides are sprayed on agricultural crops and house lawns. Seeping into the soil, wreaking havoc on the life in the soil and then washing into storm drains and streams before continuing their destructive path to our lakes and oceans.

If you're interested in reading about the entire destructive path, The Marin Post has a link to a 2016 scientific study that looked at The Unintended Consequences of Using Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup).

It's the same thing with insecticides... even if they say they are specific to a certain insect (e.g. ants, aphids, cabbage worms)... they are poison and there will be other repercussions... One gardener used an insecticide in his garden and then wondered why there were dead honeybees everywhere. Read the fine print on any of those insecticide containers and see what they say about other dangers. Even the "organic" insecticides... Insects include butterflies, bees, ladybugs, etc.

We are avid gardeners and we fight a never-ending battle with weeds in the driveway, slugs in the radish patch, aphids on the kale and wasps under the deck.

When we moved into our house, the previous owner had left some containers of Roundup, perhaps thinking that we would have a use for them. We emailed her and asked her to pick them up and take them with her.

We have made a conscious choice not to spray poison in our little queendom. The bees, birds, beetles, earthworms thank us... As for the slugs... we need to get ourselves a six-pack of beer and invite them to a little drinking party...

A few years ago, I read Silent Spring, the 1960s classic by Rachel Carson. If you haven't read it... or read it recently, I highly recommend it.

Highway Litter Picker-upper

I remember what it used to be like up north when the snow would melt in the spring. You'd be driving along the highway and see scads of litter emerging from the snowbanks and getting blown about by spring winds. Lots of plastic bags, coffee cups and of course, pop and beer cans. But at some point, magically it seemed, the litter would all disappear. How did that happen? Was their a litter fairy out there somewhere? Or was it just the highways department who came along and cleaned hundreds of kilometres of highway? I'm still not sure...

What I do know is that some provinces have an Adopt-a-Highway program. Every spring, and/or periodically through the warmer months, groups of volunteers go out with gloves, bags and reflective vests and pick up garbage along stretches of the highways. In Alberta, you can even get a sign which stakes your claim to that section of highway. It's a cool concept, and I even participated in one highway cleanup a few years (decades ago).

I was visiting a friend in Vanderhoof who belonged to a church group. That weekend, their group was slated to do a spring clean-up of a stretch of Highway 27 heading to Fort St. James. We got our gloves and bags and got organized. I think each person got a kilometre of highway and we got dropped off in little clumps. The roadside was mostly grass, bordered by farm fields. And there was a tonne of garbage in the grassy verge. It doesn't look like that much when you're whipping by at 100 kph but... when you're trudging along on foot... wow. There were lots of tires, empty oil/windshield washer/coolant containers, plastic bags, coffee cups, beer cans, pop cans, cigarette packages, candy wrappers, potato chip bags, etc, etc.

The process of bending and picking gave me lots of time to think... was all of this litter intentional throw-away stuff? Or had it blown out of the back of somebody's pick-up truck? A mixture of both quite likely. I'm not exactly sure why drivers feel it's OK to fill up their coolant/windshield washer/oil and then leave the 4 litre container along the side of the road... but they do. It's a rather odd attitude... "let someone else deal with it".  Maybe their mother always cleaned up behind them at home? Or is it just a flagrant disregard for the environment? Or just a "It's just one container..." attitude. Not sure... although some studies say it's a combination of carelessness and laziness. People don't believe that littering has any real consequence... hard to imagine given how ugly litter looks, particularly when it is washed into storm drains and out into the ocean where its harmful affects on marine life are well documented.

I have also learned, that in the 1960s and 1970s, it was quite common for people to toss their litter out their car windows and not give it a second thought. It was socially acceptable to be a litter bug... at least in some areas. But in the 1970s and 1980s... that all changed and littering became less and less socially acceptable. Sooo... is it the older people who are still set in their ways who are the main mobile litterbugs?

Apparently not... the UK did a study on mobile littering and found that one in seven drivers admitted to throwing trash out of their vehicles (that's 14% of drivers). There were five main reasons given for littering while driving:

• force of habit (25%),
• preventing clutter in the vehicle (21%),
• they couldn't stop on the road (20%),
• improving their concentration while driving (20%)
• keeping the vehicle from smelling (19%).

As for the age spread... 25% of drivers between the ages of 18-34 were deliberate litterers compared to only 5% of drivers over the age of 55. Huh, go figure... And... a study from the US showed that 70-75% of litterers (deliberate or accidental) were male. It would seem that young male drivers are the worst offenders...

Distressing as it was to see how much litter lay along the side of the highway north of Vanderhoof... picking up all that litter was very, very satisfying. I can't really put it into words... it just felt really good at a very deep, spiritual level (and not just cause it was a church group).

Here in our city, I've noticed that a team of people in ATVs clean up the garbage along the highway where it passes through town. I think they are from the highway maintenance contractor so our highways generally look pretty ship-shape most of the time. Not getting the snowfall that the north gets, also means that our highway litter is easily pickable year-round.

A highway in Vietnam with roadside litter.

It really doesn't bear thinking about what it could look like without regular litter collection. A few years back, my partner and I went to SE Asia and they don't have groups of volunteers or highway maintenance crews picking up litter along their roadsides. And it shows. There is a tonne of garbage along the roads, all of that will eventually flow or blow into streams and rivers. No wonder that so many of the waterways are covered with a floating scum of plastic. We were at one beach and it's gross to swim in the water and continually encounter floating plastic bags and other oddments.

And... it's not just a SE Asia problem. I read an article the other day about a group in Scotland that got fed up with decades worth of accumulated garbage along a stretch of road called the Lang Whang. Sounds Asian... but it's just Scottish for a "long leather bootlace"...

Ultimately, however, picking up litter along the highways and biways of our fair province isn't really addressing the problem. It's a bandaid solution and the problem will really only get addressed when people take responsibility for their litter. Having walked several kilometres of that northern highway a few years back, picking up trash, gave me a new appreciation for litter. I don't toss anything out of my vehicle... not even apple cores (they are bad for wildlife...).

Litter Pick up Ahead sign

I had a poke around the web on the psychology of littering and... it appears that two thirds of the issue is environmental or contextual and only one third rests with the individual.

Basically, if there is already a lot of litter on the ground, people feel it's OK to litter. So the trick is to provide the right bins in the right places. Which makes sense in a downtown core but, in our semi-rural, suburban area... I know of only three bins: two by bus stops and one by the convenience store. And... those bins don't really help the drivers who are "losing" their candy wrappers and beer cans in the grassy verges. Nor does it help the drivers who stop at the community mailboxes to pick up their mail and decide that it is also the perfect time to empty their vehicle of their McDonald's take-away wrappers... or empty their ash tray... or toss the unwanted junk mail on the ground. Maybe if our city had garbage bins at every community mailbox? Which would make taxes go up because not only do they have to be installed, they also have to be emptied... Or maybe everyone could just take their garbage home with them.

I once read that Disneyland/Disneyworld is pristine... not a speck of trash or litter anywhere. Apparently they did a study and watched how far people would walk while holding a piece of trash. About 30 feet. So, guess how far apart the garbage bins are spaced at Disneyland/world? Yep... 30 feet. And... every Disney employee, from the executives on down, will pick up any piece of trash they see lying on the ground. Too bad that doesn't work in the real world...

Maybe if every school kid followed a piece of litter all the way to the ocean where it ended up choking some seal's stomach. Or they had to do a stint of litter pickup along the highways. Or maybe if we learned how much material/energy/water/gasoline goes into that candy wrapper... the contents of which get eaten in five minutes (or less) and then... is tossed.

Caring for Alberta Highways

I had a look and all four of the western provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC) have Adopt-a-Highway programs... It used to be, when I participated decades ago, that the volunteer group would receive compensation in the form of dollars/pound of garbage collected. But, that is no longer the case. Although, volunteer groups do get to keep any cans/bottles, which, in some provinces, can give you some serious cash.

British Columbia's program also has the added benefit of encouraging groups to report invasive weeds when they encounter them along their stretch of highway. It's really a win-win scenario... although BC says there are "14 Reasons to Adopt a Highway in BC". BC even lists available sections of road for volunteer groups to adopt (none in our area, alas).

Of course, it doesn't just land on the schools... it lands on parents as well. If a quarter of adults aged 18-34 throw trash out of their vehicles... what message does that send to the children in the car with them? I don't have kids... but when our nieces and nephews come to visit... they're going to not just see us avoiding throwing trash out of the vehicle... they are going to now see us actively picking up litter wherever we go.

Japan's Mottainai - "What a Waste"

I was trained to be a recycler long before it was a "thing". My parents grew up during the war in Germany and my mother in particular didn't let anything go to waste. We kept and reused old jars, bits of string, bent nails (to be straightened later), boxes, paper bags, rubber bands, wrapping paper and Christmas tinsel. Nothing was wasted. And while it might sound like we could have been hoarders, we weren't. That strong German streak meant everything we reused was incredibly well organized and easy to find.

That early training has stuck with me and I still keep the sturdy rubber bands that encircle broccoli!

We have a big cardboard box in the closet which contains a number of smaller boxes... ready to hand when we want to mail something.

A childhood Christmas tree

We have a little cache of paper bags in the hall closet. Ready for any purpose requiring a paper bag...

And while we don't keep wrapping paper anymore... I still get twitchy every time I rip open a wrapped Christmas gift, instead of slowly easing a sharp knife under each bit of tape so the paper could be saved for next year (and the year after that).

Luckily... we have had cats the last 20 years or so and we don't decorate our Christmas tree with tinsel! How does one reuse tinsel? Well... instead of tossing it willy-nilly over the tree... you hang it in little clumps on the tips of the branches and then gather them carefully off the branches and store them neatly for next year (and the year after that).

For a while we were eating yogurt by the bucketful (4 litres) and we have a nice stash of buckets in our shed, useful for oh so many things in the garden. Even regular sized yogurt containers (750 ml) make a great addition to the garden supplies.

Our garden shed before we moved in...

I was quite happy to learn that we are on the cutting edge of a Japanese concept called Mottainai. It's a tricky word to translate and can mean many things... but the basic gist is a flavour of frugality which can come out as "waste not, want not", "enough" or "what a waste". Mottainai is kind of the Japanese version of the four Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle and respect.

Most of our garden has been built with Mottainai. When we moved into the house 7 years ago, there were some old 2x12s under the deck, probably the joists from the old deck. We used those boards to build our first garden beds. They weren't pretty but they worked. Only now are they rotting to the point where we really need to redo the beds.

Original shed from Kijiji

When we moved in, our garden shed was a ramshackle affair with solid posts and a metal roof, but only three walls, and those were made out of cedar log-sides... the gently rounded bits that get cut off the side of a log and are covered in bark. The shed was very breezy and there was no real protection from the elements for our garden tools.

Our first winter here, I came across a posting on Kijiji. A guy was trying to get rid of his old wooden shed. The cedar shake roof was toast but the rest of it was pretty secure. He thought that someone might come and lift the whole thing onto a flat deck and take it away. There was no way we could do that... but... I was coveting the ship-lap cedar siding and the door...

Our garden shed with the front of the old Kijiji shed

We contacted him, went over there with our tools and within six hours, we had the thing dismantled and most of it moved to our house. He did help us move some of the bigger pieces, like the interior frame, with his trailer.

Those pieces became the framework for our greenhouse. The cedar siding went onto our shed and the whole front of the guy's shed, with a few tweaks, fit perfectly onto our shed - complete with door. All for free... and all part of Mottainai.

The frames of the Kijiji shed repurposed for
our greenhouse

We've turned into regular salvage artists and joke that our favourite price is free. We've gotten a few things for free over the years: fire pit ring, metal arbor, lumber, concrete pavers, heather bush and two uprooted lilac bushes lying by the side of the road with a sign saying "Free" (we took them, pampered them with feline manure and they are thriving).

Most recently... a new house is being built around the corner and the builders leave piles of debris at the edge of the sidewalk - small off-cuts of wood, etc. It's all free for the taking and... there were some short 6"x6" landscape beams in there. They were of various lengths - 3 feet, 4 feet and 5 feet. I hauled them home and they are now serving as mini-retaining wall edging around a new garden bed along our property line. Sometimes we do have to buy things new, like fence posts and fence boards. But... overall... we have gotten a lot of things second-hand.

We have found so many cool and useful things second-hand for which we have paid a few dollars: compost bins, pavers, concrete builder blocks (sooo useful), plants, garden tools, lawn mowers, lumber, garden furniture, garden pots, black lawn edging, etc. Not only is it all much cheaper than buying new... we are practicing Mottainai. My only bit of advice would be this: be careful with second-hand appliances. We bought a small freezer off of Kijiji and the compressor was failing. It was cold when we looked at it (yay) but when we got it home, we realized it never reached freezing temperature. Buyer beware! We then got a second-hand freezer from an appliance repair place... a bit more reputable.

Rethink - Beyond the 4-Rs

I do have to say that, during this time of Covid-19, we are missing garage sales and thrift stores. They are all about Mottainai and it seems that some are slowly starting to reopen.

We do, however,  keep our eye on Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace and have regular discussions about what we find there. Do we want/need it, or not? Is it worth the time and effort?

We are so used to being able to dispose of unwanted items via thrift stores that now... we are being forced to re-evaluate what we have and how we can best put it to good use. Even more so than normal!

I also have to say that I rather like the Rethink diagram here... it shows that there are more options than the traditional Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We take a fair bit of pride in being Salvage Artists... It might not make a huge difference, but anything that we can keep out of the landfill and put to good use is a win for us and for the environment.

What I've Discovered so far while Plalking

Well... this has been fascinating. Every morning I go for a quick walk in our neighbourhood, about 15 minutes in total. The first day after discovering Plalking, I stuffed my pockets with a couple of grocery store bags. I was a bit shocked to discover that there was enough garbage to fill two grocery bags. Mind you, some of the stuff had been there for quite a while, so I'm hoping that there will be much less in the future. Lately, I'm only finding a few candy wrappers, the odd beer can along the road or maybe some cigarette wrappers.

One thing I've noticed is that I still have a bit of a hurdle to get over... there is a small voice in my head that, after seeing a piece of trash lying on the ground, goes something like this:

Should I pick that up?
It's just a small piece of garbage...
Someone else might pick it up...
There's a car coming... they will think you are weird for picking up trash...
Heck... the people in these houses will think you are weird for picking up trash...
Maybe... people will think I am doing "community service" by picking up trash!! Ack!

Reusable grocery bag in brambles

And on it goes. I have to have a fairly rigorous conversation with myself to get over these hurdles... but so far, I am managing it... mostly. And it's not just me... that internal dialogue happens in a lot of people!

Back when I was growing up, there was a family friend, a rich guy, who, when he retired, would go around town dressed in "shabby" clothes picking up pop and beer bottles. There was a lot of judgement around him...

And... at university in the 1980s, one my profs was seen around campus picking up cans and bottles as well. He actually started a scholarship fund with the proceeds which had reached $46,000 by the time he died in 2012. There was less judgement around him... although he was known as "quirky" which is a step up from "eccentric".

As one blogger said, picking up trash is breaking a taboo. It normalizes an activity that many frown upon and encourages others to pick up trash as well. And the more trash there is lying around, the more people feel it is OK to just add theirs to the pile. When I pick up trash, I'm demonstrating pride in a community... that I care about our neighbourhood and the environment. Which apparently sets a good example for others. I try to keep that in mind but... it's easier out in the woods where I'm quite happy to pick up trash as long as there is nobody around! I guess I'm still in development with letting go of the fear of being judged by others!

Here are a few things I've picked up recently...

• doggy doo-doo bags (full ones) left along the side of the trail. I totally understand. You've just started your hike and the dog goes poopies. Do you really want to carry that full poopy bag the whole hike? No. I know this because my Mom used to do this with our dog. But she would come back out that same way and pick up the bag(s). So, I did debate that the owner of these might come back and get them... but they were in the middle of the hike... so I decided to take them and leave the owner to wonder what happened to them.
• men's underwear and other pieces of clothing - left in the picnic area of a local park... apparently it has different activities at nighttime 
• pop and beer cans ($$)
• burnt aerosol cans where someone, kids I presume,  had a fire out in the bush
• a brand new but ripped reusable grocery bag - hanging in the brambles for several days before I grabbed it on my first day of Plalking...
• lots and lots of Tim Horton's coffee cups... no Starbucks cups though... perhaps Starbucks drinkers are more eco-conscious? Or just don't go hiking?
• a sway bar - obviously some vehicle is now swaying a bit more after losing that bit along the roadside... 

I have to say... my eye has now become attuned to garbage along the side of the road... and there is a lot more than I had expected. Maybe I just didn't notice it before?

The Cost of a Library Card

Have you ever looked at your property taxes? We just got our statement and I wanted to have a closer look at some of the items. There was one entry that jumped out at me... how much money goes to our local library...

That's it... $91.38 a year goes to our local library. Which seems a ridiculously tiny amount of money for the benefits it can give. And... that number is for our entire household! So, really, per person (in our two person household), it's $45.69/person...

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog post about my love affair with books and I included a picture which speaks volumes...

In 2018, the average value of a library card was $661. That means that of the citizens who have a library card, the average person got $661 of value out of their library card... I had a look at our 2018 Property Tax statement and that year... we paid $78 towards the library. Crazy!

Sooo... in 2018, we paid $39/person for the library and got $661 in value... that's a pretty sweet deal. It's like a 94% discount or a 1695% bonus... who would not want to take advantage of that??

I couldn't find stats for our library system but... in Canada as a whole, about 60% of Canadians have a library card. Only 40% of Canadians, however, are active library borrowers. So... that means 60% of Canadians are paying for the library system but not using it. I was one of those people for many years - it was just easier to buy books. And too much of a hassle to order the books via the library and then remember to return them... But, I have become a library convert...

Although, our household does seem to follow the stats, more or less... I have a library card but my partner does not. Although... any books she requests, I order on my card, which works out well.

Right now, with the virus circulating, I obviously haven't been able to access the library, which has been closed. At least not for physical books... but e-books are still available... and a variety of databases. And... our library just posted a notice that we can now use the Ancestry Library Edition (genealogy research) which is super cool!

I miss the library and I'm going to guess that the 2020 value of a library card is going to be a bit less this year but still... it's good for the environment and good for my budget...

In the News - Disposable Clothes

As I write this on 25 March, most clothing stores are closed due to Covid19. As are most thrift stores. I think our Value Village might still be open... nope, just checked and it is closed. I guess clothing and fashion aren't really essential to daily living!

This means we are all going to have live with whatever we have in our closets and dressers which is likely quite a bit. After all, most of us wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time, leaving a whole 80% of our closet with very little to do. Without the option for buying the latest spring fashions... our closets might get some fresh air and new life as we start actually wearing what we already own.

I'm not a fashionista by any means. I haven't bought new clothes (except underwear and socks) for years. All of my clothing comes from thrift stores, usually Value Village because they have the best selection. I'm also a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal... I don't need anything fancy. So, I've always been a bit perplexed by the fashion industry and the latest spring/fall fashions. The only time it impinges on me is when pants flare out to bell bottoms or got ultra skinny. Although, nowadays, I can usually find some pair of thrift jeans that work and are just standard, plain old jeans.

I came across this news article the other month... about how Metro Vancouver throws away 20,000 tonnes of clothes each year. That's a lot of clothing. And that is just the clothing that actually goes to the landfill... not to thrift stores where it might get a second or third life. Although a lot of clothing that doesn't sell at thrift stores ends up being shipped to third world countries where it might get sold at a market or... end up cluttering up their landfills.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that Fast Fashion is not designed to be Sturdy Fashion. Spring/Fall fashions are meant to be worn for one season and then cast aside for the next fashion season. Which means manufacturers do not make them to last.

Make Do and Mend

On top of that, clothing manufacturing can be a highly toxic industry and use enormous amounts of water. So the more fast fashion that is produced... and then discarded... the higher the demand... and the more pollution we generate. Yes, "we". With our demands for new clothing, we fuel the supply chain that creates the toxins and drains the water supply. If you're interested in learning more about the unsustainability of the fashion industry... have a look at this BBC article. It covers the whole gamut quite nicely.

The other problem lies in the fact that we, as a society, have generally lost the impetus to Make Do and Mend. It's been decades since I mended a sock... or patched a hole in a pair of jeans.

When I was growing up, my Mom, who had trained as a seamstress, was forever darning socks and patching our clothing. Heck, she even made our clothing! We had boxes of Simplicity, Butterick and McCall's patterns and got to go to school dressed in red, purple or lime green polyester pant suits... oooh.

Butterick pattern

She sewed, she crocheted, she hand-knitted and she even had a Knittax knitting machine. Mom grew up during the Depression and the War in Europe and... she learned how to mend and make do. It might be something that we could learn from today.

For myself, if my t-shirts get stained or develop a hole, they get demoted to play clothes and then to garden t-shirts. Right now... I have a lot of garden t-shirts available!

As for jeans... my current garden jeans have a massive hole in the knee and I am already eyeing my closet to see which pair of jeans will volunteer to become the new garden jeans. For right now though, I will eek out as much wear from the current torn garden jeans as I can...

What else can we do?

• Mend and Make Do - if you've got a sewing machine... you're in the money!
• Get more life out of our clothes - wear them carefully - use aprons when cooking or wear a garden t-shirt while cooking (I can't tell you how many of my t-shirts have cooking oils splatters...)
• Clothing Swap - this might not work so well in the Year of the Virus but... at other times... swap clothes with friend who are the same size
• Wear what we Have - that out-of-fashion pair of pants might be perfectly fine when all else fails...

I'm going to hazard a guess that we are all going to get a crash course in minimalism and learn what the really important things are. Fast Fashion isn't going to be one of those things. Besides... the fashion industries are too busy rejigging production lines to make Personal Protection Equipment (masks, gowns, scrubs)...

In the News - Recycling Mattresses

When my Dad passed away last year, my sister and I had to decide what to do with all of his stuff, including his furniture. He had a nice solid wood bed frame which we kept, but what to do with the mattress and box spring? These were old... probably from the 1970s. They still had handles for Pete's sake.

I already knew that no thrift store in our city would take used mattresses, so that was out. They were too old and stained to try and sell on Kijiji. We didn't have a vehicle which could schlepp the mattresses to the dump. So we got a couple of "We get rid of your Trash" guys from Kijiji and they came, tied the mattress and box spring to the top of their vehicle and drove off with it. We paid them $40 to dispose of it at the landfill. Theoretically. I've since learned that these fly-by-night guys could just have driven down some side road and dumped the mattresses in the bush. It was a convenience for us to go with a couple of cheap guys... but I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. I've seen my share of mattresses by the side of the road sooo... clearly that is not a solution.


But is it really that big a deal? I mean... when you buy a mattress... you're buying it for 20-25 years, right? Nope... apparently the average mattress life-span is 8-10 years. The US throws away 18,000,000 mattresses/year. Canadians throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. And the numbers are only increasing. People today are buying new memory foam mattresses with gusto via Casper and other online retailers, mattresses that might not last more than a few years.

My partner and I bought a top-of-the-line memory foam mattress about 15 years ago. It was heaven for the first few months but then... the memory foam started to form a bad memory and it didn't bounce back like it had before. There were hollows that formed in the foam and the comfort disappeared. Worst purchase ever. We contacted the retailer but they said it was normal wear. Ugh. No 100 day guarantee there. We eventually got rid of it by gifting it to a friend who wanted a memory foam mattress.

Casper - mail order mattresses

Had we bought an online memory foam mattress though... we could have tried it for 100 days, decided that it wasn't for us, and then send it back to the retailer. While we could then try another online retailer with a 100 day guarantee. Rinse and repeat. Apparently this is a thing. With over 100 online mattress retailers, you could conceivably cycle through a new mattress every 100 days and never actually buy one. And your used & returned mattress? Are they resold? Hmm... likely not. Welcome to the World of Disposable Mattresses... each with a 100 day life span.

Which got me thinking... what happens to old mattresses that can't be re-gifted or sold? Where do they go, besides the side of the road? Do they get buried in the landfill? Apparently they do, for a fee of course. Gone are the days when you could just dump your old mattress at the landfill for free. Today, it costs $15/mattress/box spring to dump at our landfill. Which... errr... really makes me think our junk boys took our money ($40) and just dumped the mattresses in the bush instead of shelling out $30 at the landfill.

Some municipalities (e.g. Vancouver) actually banned mattress from landfills in 2011 (that's progressive!). I can now see why dumping by the side of the road might be preferable for some... just let the city/regional district/taxpayer fork over the cash to pick it up and dispose of it. It's not a small problem... so what are the other options? Can mattresses be recycled?

Mattress recycling in Calgary

Yes and no... mattresses are challenging to recycle AND their component parts do not generate a lot of income. Mattresses are basically fabric, padding, metal springs and wood. While the metal has some value... the padding (foam, etc) can be harder to handle. It can cost more to recycle a mattress than the sale of its component parts. That's why even mattress recyclers will charge money to handle our worn-out sleeping pads.

It's no wonder then that mattress recycling facilities aren't all that common. The citizens of the United States throw away 18,200,000 mattresses a year... but there are only 56 recycling facilities that can handle mattresses in the US. As for Canada, we apparently throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. How many recycling facilities are there? Not sure... let me look into that...

Well... that was fascinating! I learned quite a bit while researching this blog post. The good news is 95% of a mattress's components can be given a second life. Check out the video link below to see what happens to mattresses...

Common mattress components - steel, foam, cotton, wood

• polyurethane padding - shredded, pressed and used for carpet underlay
• cotton batting - cleaned and used for furniture stuffing
• felt padding - available for free from recycler - can be used as insulation or packing material
• wooden frame - available for free from recycler or used as biofuel
• metal springs - go to metal recycling

That's the good news... the bad news is that there aren't that many mattress recycling facilities out there. And... many municipalities either ban mattresses from landfill or charge fees for their disposal. Sooo... the bad news is that there are some less than ideal ways to deal with excess mattresses.

Sri Lanka - UK container with mattresses (the green plastic
is used by manufacturers and stores when they "recycle"
mattresses)

Mattresses are sometimes shipped off to the Third World where they become someone else's problem. In 2019, a batch of shipping containers from the UK were sent to Sri Lanka and found to be mislabeled as "metal recycling". The containers didn't have metal recyclables... they were stuffed to the gills with mattresses, plastics and hospital waste (think amputation parts).

There is also the "refurbished" mattress industry, which is legal in some areas... and illegal in others.

Refurbishers take whatever old mattresses they can find, recover them and then sell them for cheap in furniture stores, thrift stores and, sometimes, from the back of a van.

Tags from a new and a sanitized, refurbished mattress.

The mattresses are "supposed" to have been sanitized but this may not always be the case. Obviously, this can be very unhygienic and it's debatable if it is worth the cheaper price. Refurbished mattresses can be identified because they don't have any tags... so... buyer beware...

I've done a bit of digging and... we do have a few legitimate mattress recyclers in Western Canada:

• Hope, BC (go BC!!) - Mattress Recycling - they charge $20/box spring/mattress
• Vancouver BC - Canadian Mattress Recycling - $20/mattress/box spring (they also recycle furniture). These guys have a pretty cool story - watch this three minute video to learn what happens to all the mattress bits...
• Calgary, AB - Re-Matt - $20/mattress/box spring - Albert's first mattress recycling company - similar to the other two companies

And... our regional district is moving in the same direction. They started a pilot project last November and in two months, 710 mattresses were diverted from the landfill. Hoping that continues.


But all of this raises the question... it still costs money to bring an old mattress/box spring to a recycling facility. It makes me wonder why the government doesn't tack on an eco-recycling fee to the purchase price of a new mattress. You know, like with vehicle tires. We pay up the end-of-life recycle/disposal fee up front, so it doesn't become an issue to dispose of the tires sensibly. I remember the day when such was not the case and tires would end up out in the bush where they would slowly leach toxins into the soil and ground water. Those days are gone (or are they?)... maybe it's time to add mattresses to that list...

Inspiration
This blog post started with a CTV news article which made me curious...
CTV News - Calgary company recycles thousands of mattresses
Guardian - The Mattress Landfill Crisis

The Benefits of Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen, Dine like a Maid

Cover - Change your Schedule,
Change Your Life by
Suhas Kshirsagar

Back in September, we turned our eating schedule upside down. We were reading a book called: Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life, a blend of Ayurvedic wisdom and cutting edge science.

One of the suggestions in the book was to eat the largest meal of the day at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner/supper time. The benefits were weight loss, better sleep, more energy, etc.

This was rather a radical concept to us. I mean, we knew that it was a common practice in Europe where lunch was often a hot meal and dinner was a bit of soup or an open-faced sandwich.

We'd never even heard of the idea of Breakfast like a King/Queen, Lunch like a Prince/Princess, Dine like a Pauper/Maid.

After much discussion, we decided to give it a try. We would eat a large, hot meal at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner time. Not just that, we would finish eating the evening meal four hours before bedtime. Apparently our bodies do not handle evening meals all that well and the later we eat, or the closer to bedtime we eat, the more likely that all those calories will get packed on as excess poundage. Given that we normally are in bed before 10 pm... this meant that our evening meal needed to happen before 6 pm!

We both work from home, so we had some flexibility in our schedules but, still, this switch required that we handle some big logistical hurdles. The first few weeks were a bit bumpy, but we've worked out most of the kinks. Some of the key steps were preparation and planning.

We started meal planning for the coming week so that we knew what we needed to buy at the grocery store. There's nothing worse than looking at recipe at 10:30 am, ready to get cooking, and realizing that we were missing some key ingredient.

We also knew exactly what we would be cooking the next day and what might need to come out of the freezer the day before. I can't tell you how many times we would miss that step in the old days and realize at 5 pm that we had nothing to eat and would then default to eat-out or take-out... not good for the health of our bodies or our budget! It's a bit harder to use that default when you're cooking in the mornings and most pizza places don't open that early!

The trickiest bit was getting used to the idea of cooking in the mornings. It felt really weird and threw a lot of monkey wrenches into well-entrenched habits and routines. We learned that cooking every single morning of the week was no fun... far better to make a big pot of something on the weekend and be able to eat that for several days before then having to cook something else mid-week.

We also learned that having frozen leftovers was non-negotiable. There are some days when we'd wake up and not feel like cooking but... we had something in the freezer that we could pull out and defrost quickly.

The importance of meal timing for our circadian rhythms

Now, has it made a difference for us? Absolutely. We are definitely eating less which means we have both lost weight. We also have more energy in the afternoons and sleep better at night. And, honestly, there are some evenings where I don't feel like eating anything and so I don't. It's actually a good thing to go to bed a bit hungry. This also means that when I wake up, I am quite hungry and so breakfast has gotten a bit bigger. It used to be that I would only eat a couple of peanut butter & jam sandwiches in the mornings. But now... it's a bowl of oatmeal with berries and walnuts, a bowl of meat-free baked beans and a peanut butter & mushed berries pumpernickel sandwich. I have tried various combinations of those three but, if I didn't have all three, I would often find myself hungry again at 9:30 am. This is the problem when you get up early and eat breakfast at 6 am! But... a solid breakfast now tides me over until lunch time.

But here's the thing... I would say the lunch meal is still the biggest meal of the day... not breakfast. So, for me, it's really Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen and dine like a Maid. And for my partner, it's different. Breakfast fell off the radar a few months ago and she now starts her day with a big lunch, and then has some soup and a berry bowl in the evenings. The common theme is... biggest meal at lunch.

It's all tied in with our circadian rhythms... there are many, many studies that have shown the benefits of eating most of our calories earlier in the day. And, on the flip side... the harm that comes from eating a lot of calories in the evenings...

Flipping our meal timing so that our largest meal is at lunchtime was a small step in our road to physical wellness. It wasn't an easy step by any means but... having done it for over six months now... it was a very worthwhile step and one that we have now integrated into our lifestyle.

What the Heck is Plogging and Plalking??

I've been going on some local hiking adventures the last few weekends. Just me, myself and I. I've been going to local places, mostly off the beaten path, that I've been meaning to explore for a while. I have my backpack with a few essentials:

• rain jacket
• water bottle
• bear spray
• first aid kit
• toilet paper (just cause you never know)
• flashlight
• garden kneeling pad (a seat cushion for soggy moss)

Which seems fairly comprehensive for a one to two hour hike but... lately, I've been thinking I need to include something else... some plastic grocery bags. Because, the more I hike, the more I see bits and pieces of garbage lying around. A Tim Horton's cup, a chocolate bar wrapper, a beer can. In the weirdest places. I'm not sure what that's about but... as I walk by the piece of trash, I keep thinking... "I should have a plastic bag... I could pick that up...".

But... I never put bags in my backpack and... voila... the cycle continues. Excuse me, while I get up and go and fix that right now...

***author will be right back***

 Done.  Thanks to Covid-19, we are pretty flush with plastic grocery bags at the moment, given the ban on reusable bags. I am now prepped for whatever might come my way. Mostly.

I was doing a bit of research for this blog and, much to my surprise, learned that this picking-up-of-garbage while out in nature is a "thing". Actually three things: Plogging - picking up garbage while jogging... Plalking - picking up garbage while walking... and Pliking - picking up garbage while biking (could be hiking too).

Some Plalkers or Ploggers....

The idea comes from the Swedish term "plocka upp" (translation: "pick up"), because the Swedes apparently started this craze. Trust the Swedes to be on the cutting edge of environmental stewardship.

I have to admit though... I haven't seen a lot of joggers whipping by carrying plastic bags full of garbage... so this might have been a passing fad from the 2018s...

Although, the City of Winnipeg has a Plalking Club... so maybe it's not so out of date.

I love the concept because.. to be truthful... the guilt is getting to me. Every time I am out in the woods and see a piece of trash, I have a major debate with myself... "Should I pick that up? It's not my trash. Someone else will pick it up. Maybe they will come back for it?" It's kind of ridiculous really because ultimately, I'm the one standing there, looking at the piece of trash. And I'm the one who walks away from it struggling with a gnawing feeling of guilt.

It's such a small thing to pick up some trash and carry it out to a garbage can... and/or recycle bin. It's not like I see bags and bags of garbage when I'm out there. Plus... given the number of pop and beer cans I see, I could even make a bit of cash doing this.

I read a couple of blogs about Plogging which had some helpful suggestions for other items I could toss into my backpack:

• gloves (rubber grip or latex gloves)
• grabber (long-handled)
• wide mouth screw top container for sharps/needles
• hand sanitizer
• closed toed shoes
• luggage scale (to weigh the haul)

***author will be right back ***

My Plalking kit...

Alright, I now have a pair of garden gloves in my backpack (the ones with the rubberized fronts) and a couple of pairs of latex gloves. I also rummaged through the recycle box and pulled out a wide-mouth plastic peanut butter jar. I'm not sure I'll be picking up any sharps/needles but... still a good thing to have in the backpack. I am going to pass on the grabber thing as well as the luggage scale, neither of which we have at home. The hand sanitizer is a bit of a tricky thing at the moment given how hard it is to find any in the stores. I'll keep looking and see if I can find some of those little travel sized ones...

While I'm at it... I'm adding some plastic grocery bags to various jacket pockets as well. My partner and I go for a couple of walks a day and while we don't see a lot of garbage... when we do, it would be nice to have a plastic bag ready instead of walking by the piece of trash with a guilty conscience. I think I'll toss some into the vehicle as well... just to cover my bases.

I'm also thinking I should pack some bread bags. When I put toilet paper on the list of backpack supplies, I realized that I should probably scoop the toilet paper and/or poop produced by my own activities. Ahem...

On top of the eco-benefits of Plogging/Plalking/Pliking... there are also health benefits. Apparently bending over whilst walking is good for cardiovascular health as it mimics our hunter-gather forebears who would walk long distances while stopping along the way to pick berries and dig roots. Go figure.

Pink plastic tote lid in meadow

Now... there are times where I come across some odd trash items. Like the other day, I was hiking off trail through a meadow when I came across a lid from a plastic tote... Perhaps it blew off of a truck on the nearby highway and ended up in the meadow? Or perhaps there was an old homeless camp nearby... The lid would be a bit of a bigger challenge to hike out because it's large and unwieldy. I also come across abandoned homeless camps on a regular basis, complete with old tents and tarps and goodness knows what else. These too are a bit of a problem. Way too much for me to pack out. I did, however, learn that there is a group of volunteers in the city that clean up these old encampments. Just have to let them know where it is. Cool...

I've had the intention to pick up garbage on my daily walks for quite a while now (months, if not years) but today, I've taken a few small steps which will make it much more likely that I will actually do it when I'm out hiking and/or walking. And each piece of garbage that I pick up is one less piece out in the woods or on the strets. 

Sooo... have you heard of Plogging/Plalking/Pliking? Do you participate in this eco-friendly activity?? Found anything cool and interesting in your trash travels?