The Misunderstood Rule of the Woods - Leave No Trace

Sooo... we had a gorgeous warm, sunny weekend a few weeks ago Folks were out in the woods and parks in full force.

Actually, I didn't see them there... I just came across their remains. Well, not "their" remains... but the stuff that they left behind.

There's a rocky bluff up by the local lake and it's a popular hangout  for the younger crowd in the warmer months, particularly on the weekends. Last summer, I made it a regular weekend stop because there always seemed to be remains...

On that sunny weekend, I decided to walk through the woods to the bluff on Sunday morning because it is a beautiful spot, overlooking the lake with the mountain in the background. I can get some gorgeous photographs there...

As I came to the top of the bluff, I had a sense of what I would find down by the shore. Off to the side of the trail, down the slope was a spilled bag of beer and cooler cans. I decided to pick them up on my way out...

And... sure enough... once I got closer to the water... scads of garbage - towels, chip bags, drink cups, pizza boxes and various miscellaneous crap. Clearly, the younger folk had a good time here Saturday evening. They just neglected to clean up after themselves.

There were a couple of early fishermen down by the water, and one of them called out that he had cleaned up a similar mess on Saturday morning. And yet, here was more. Sad. Disgusted.

I didn't have a large garbage bag in my pack, just a regular plastic bag. I debated my options. It was a good 15 minutes back to the truck... And there was a lot of stuff there...

In the end, I used one of the towels as a make-shift tote and gathered everything together. It was bulky, unwieldy and moderately heavy... damp towels aren't lightweight. But... I made it back to the trail head and shoved everything into the garbage can there.

I had several debates with myself during this process:

Tossing the Towels

Should I have taken the towels home, washed them and then donated them to the SPCA? That would seem to be the most eco-friendly thing to do and yet... we are living in the time of Covid and I didn't really want to bring this pile of damp towels back to our home. I took the route of least resistance and just dumped them... but I felt bad doing that.

Not My Monkeys, Not My Circus

Should I have just left the mess there for the "kids" to come back and clean up on their own? Am I just enabling this sort of mess-making by cleaning up after them? After all, it's not my mess... not my job to clean up after slovenly youth!

I decided "No"... if these kids were raised right by their parents... they'd already know that they should clean up after themselves. This isn't so much about the youth... it's about the parents...

Some people excuse this sort of behaviour by saying that it's hard to clean up after a party in the dark, particularly when the scoundrels are drunk as skunks. Perhaps... but the bigger question then is... if they are too drunk to clean up after themselves... who's driving everyone home? And who had the common sense to pack all the cans into a bag? Admittedly, a bag that got dropped down a slope and left for someone else to clean up...

Trash Begets Trash

But here's the thing... they've done studies on trash and litter. If it starts to accumulate somewhere... say along the side of the road or at a park, guess what? People apparently feel it's OK to toss their own litter and trash there. This is why graffiti gets painted over quickly... if it stays up, it tells other graffiti-ers that it's OK to add their own creations to that building or bridge. Cities have to stay on top of graffiti... and it's the same with trash. And there is no way cities can stay on top of the amount of trash that gets routinely tossed along roadways and trails... It's up to civic-minded citizens to step up... that's you and me folks...

If you go out into the woods or a city park or the beach... there are some rules of the trail that you might have heard of...

Pack it In, Pack It Out

There is a pretty well-known rule of the hiker crowd... if you pack it in, you pack it back out. This applies equally well to the folks walking in city parks and local woodlands. What it means is this...

If you bring a granola bar to eat on your walk... you pack out your granola bar wrapper. You don't just drop it on the trail. This is why seamstresses gave us pockets! 

If you bring your cup of Timmies along for the walk... you carry that cup the whole length of your walk. You don't just toss it in the woods. Drink cups are lined with a thin film of plastic and that stuff never ever decays. Trust me... I've seen the various stages of disintegration of a Timmies cup... the plastic liner is still lying in the woods months after you tossed your Timmies cup there. Or Starbucks cup... or McDonald's cup.

If you scoop your dog's poop while on the trail, good for you!!! Excellent... but that's only the first step. You have now committed to carrying that poop bag the entire way back to your vehicle... or the nearest garbage can, whichever comes first...  And no, a hollow stump is NOT a garbage can. I can't tell you how many poopy bags I've found in the woods, tossed off the trail by some half-assed "responsible" dog owner.

Leave No Trace

This is another well-known rule of the woods, particularly the back-packing crowd. It includes the "pack it in, pack it out" rule along with a few others. But here's the thing... it's not just about me or you leaving no trace... it's about taking it a step farther and leaving a negative trace.

Great that you tuck your granola bar wrapper into your backpack or pocket. But now... here's the question... what do you do when you see a granola bar wrapper on the trail? It's not your wrapper... not your monkeys... not your circus. What do you do?

Leave it for the owner to come back and clean up?? Come on... that ain't never gonna happen! Maybe they dropped it on purpose... maybe it fell out of their pocket by accident... Doesn't matter, they ain' coming back for it.

Leave it for the park patrol to clean up? There ain't no park patrol!

Actually there is... you are the park patrol. You saw the wrapper on the ground... now it's up to you to leave no trace. Just pretend it's your granola bar wrapper that fell out of your pocket accidentally on your last walk. Pick it up and put it in your pocket or pack or perhaps... the plastic bag that you could start carrying to collect trash along the trail...

Leave it Better than You Found It

Which leads me to the last rule of the trail... leave it better than you found it. Yes, you can be responsible for your own trash but... we are all citizens of a larger community, a larger world. We are all caretakers of the Earth... of our forests and trails and waterways. Someone said I could have just left the garbage for the "kids" to clean up. Maybe... but in that time, the wind might have blown some of it into the lake where it would drift around, perhaps harming fish or birds in the process. We all know that six-pack rings are NOT eco-friendly.

Sooo... even though these aren't my monkeys or my circus... I can see that I will need to be stocking my pockets and pack with plastic grocery bags. And if you see a person on the trail carrying a bag of garbage or cans... give them a smile and a thank you! And... consider carrying our own stash of bags...

Post-Script

Soooo... I did a pass through of the bluff on my Monday morning walk and found a good two dozen cans and bottles littering the rocks. Not much actual garbage though. I was prepared with a number of bags and came out of the woods with a half-bag of garbage and a bag and a half of cans...

Love Food Hate Waste

We hate throwing away food. And yet... it happens. Not as often as before, but still. Every little bit that gets thrown away weighs on us.

Sometimes it's because things migrate to the back of the refrigerator and well... we lose sight of them and by the time we find them... oops... too far gone.

Sometimes it's because the produce we buy has already started down the road to decay. I'm looking at you avocados! Sooo expensive and they look fine on the outside. But when you open them up, they're all brown and icky. And then there are the bags of mandarins or oranges which have one that is has already gone off.

Or the limp stalks of celery... but those can usually get repurposed for soup stock!

Apparently we are not alone. We received a waste management newsletter from our regional district a few weeks ago. They are aiming for Zero Waste... our goal is 90% waste reduction by 2030. We are only at 67% waste reduction... but we're getting there!

They had a short article on food waste which really shocked me. One third of all food produced globally is wasted! That's just mind-boggling. That food gets wasted from the farm to the table... all along the food production route. From squiggly potatoes that don't look "perfect" to wastage in transit, to wastage in grocery stores to wastage in our fridges to wastage off the plate. 

Love Food Hate Waste Canadian stats

And look... every day in Canada... every DAY... we waste 1,200,000 tomatoes... 2,400,000 potatoes... 450,000 eggs. Every day. WTF?

That's 2.2 million tonnes of food every year... tossed. Not only is a waste of food, but it's a waste of water, fertilizer, energy, gasoline, labour, etc, etc. Oh, and it's a waste of money too... Those 2.2 million tonnes of food waste cost us over $17 billion dollars a year... and contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions...

Want some more stats?

• Canadians are among the worst of the developed nations when it comes to food waste, with about 47 percent of food waste occurring in the home
• 63% of household food waste in Canada is avoidable
• An average household throws away $1,000 of edible food per year.
  

 Sheesh...

There's a website which aims to help us waste less food, with tips on everything from how to store produce so it stays fresh longer, to meal planning and portion sizes. Some great tips for all of us... and most of them are just small steps... but make a big difference!

Busted! Illegal Backcountry Trash Dumpers caught on Video

Have you ever dumped anything out in the bush? Or in a ditch along the side of the road? Or maybe in an empty lot?

No??

Maybe it was just some grass clippings or leaves or some sod?

Or maybe it was more than that...

Illegal dumping (or fly tipping in the UK) is on the rise in many countries. It can include anything from grass clippings to cars to appliances to pallets to construction waste to medical waste. It is a huge environmental problem. Apart from leaching toxins into the soil (asbestos, chemicals, bio-hazards) illegal dumping can also spread noxious and invasive weeds.

Yard waste dumped in an empty lot might not just be "grass" clippings but might include invasive species that threaten the native ecosystem. Over here... that includes things like

• English Ivy
• Himalayan Blackberry
• English Hawthorn
• Japanese Knotweed - Polygonum cuspidatum
• Policeman's Helmet or Himalayan Balsam - Impatiens glandulifera
• Scotch Broom
• Butterfly Bush
• English Holly
  
• Morning Glory
  
• Spurge Laurel - Daphne laureola
  
• Gorse
  

Such plants should never be included within your compost bin either but should be double bagged and sent to the landfill where they can be buried forever...

Illegal dumping also costs taxpayers (that's you and me) millions of dollars every year. It's not a cheap thing to bring in a crane and trucks to haul away derelict cars, tires, machinery, appliances and other crap.

Caught Red-Handed

Some municipalities and regional districts, rather than just cleaning up after someone's made a mess, are getting proactive and installing motion-activated trail cameras at some of the most popular illegal dumping sites. Busted!!

 

And it's not just hidden cameras that can track down illegal dumpers. One farm owner in New Brunswick found 30 to 40 garbage bags worth of garbage strewn in the ditch in front of his family farm. While cleaning it up, he found a Nike box with a shipping label receipt inside that gave him the name and address of the perpetrator. The farmer drove to the address, confronted the perpetrator, who eventually admitted his guilt and told the perpetrator to unload the garbage onto his front lawn.

Some irate land owners haven't been so polite... they have just driven to the address found within the pile of garbage and dumped it on someone's front lawn (presumably that of the perpetrator). That can of course backfire as the land owner is simply doing the same as the perpetrator... illegal dumping. 

Some upset property owners, when they find identifiable information in a pile of garbage, call out the perpetrator online via social media. But that can lead to other problems... sometimes legal... so is not ideal. But what can irate land owners to do? Apparently, not much. Unless you have photos and videos... a simple visual description and license plate number won't stand up in court.

Of course there are the rare times where a person will be caught live on a dashcam, in the very act of dumping stuff out in the bush. I always wonder... what happened after the camera shut off? Did the perpetrator obediently take his stuff to a legal dump? Or did he just find another, less patrolled spot?

Other Forms of Illegal Dumping

As noted above, illegal dumping also includes dumping yard waste in natural areas (yes, even Christmas trees). But it also includes such seemingly innocuous things such as dumping household waste in a public garbage can or dumpster (even your dumpster at work). My Dad would do this for some odd reason. He would take a bag of his garbage along to Walmart and dump in the garbage can our front. I tend to think it was mostly empty cookie packages that he was trying to hide from us!

And... putting an item out at the curb and placing a "Free" sign on it can be problematic as well. Inevitably, the old couch (or whatever) is not taken and then it rains and the item is essentially abandoned at the curb... yep, that's illegal dumping.

Why Do People Dump?

That's always the burning question. Why do people dump things in the ditch or in the bush?

Apparently "convenience" is a big driver, although that doesn't always make sense. Some of the remote bush dump sites are a longer drive than the regional landfill. Sometimes people don't want to have to deal with the hassle of sorting their waste. Easier to just toss it all in the truck and dump it somewhere.

Cost is often cited as an issue since some waste actually costs money to dispose of at the landfill (harmful construction waste - e.g. drywall with asbestos). Even yard waste can cost money - usually $/pound. On the other hand, many items can be dropped off for free at our local recycling depot - anything made out of metal... any appliances... any propane tanks or canisters... paint cans (with legible labels). And the list goes on. 

Ignorance seems to be a driving motivator for illegal dumping. People don't know the environmental dangers of what they are dumping... or they just don't care. And they aren't aware of the numerous legal means for getting rid of unwanted items.

Beware of the Two Guys and a Truck Scheme

And finally... a word of warning. After my Dad passed away, we needed to get rid of his old (1960s?) mattress and box spring. We didn't have a pick-up truck capable of hauling it off to the dump. So we looked on Kijiji and found two guys with a truck who would come and haul it away for us. Only $40! Seemed like a good deal. They came and loaded up. We paid them cash and they left.

But... did they really take it to the dump? Did they really pay the dump fee. The average cost to dispose of a box spring and mattress in our regional district is... $15 each. That's $30 in dump fees. Yeah. I'm going to guess that Dad's old mattress is mouldering away in some illegal dump site in the bush.

Live and learn. Beware of any "cheap" offers by a couple of guys with a truck who offer to haul garbage away for you. There is no guarantee that your garbage is going to end up in the dump.

Happily... things have progressed in the last few years to the point where many landfills are now diverting mattresses to be recycled rather than buried in a landfill!

On a final note... even legitimate companies can run into trouble with illegal dumping, often because their employees are too lazy or uninformed to adhere to company policy. In Chicago, one truck from the Two Men and a Truck Moving Company were actually caught dumping furniture in an alley. The two guys were fired and the company had to come and haul the furniture away.

Other Resources

CBC - Illegal garbage dumpers in the Okanagan

CBC - Hidden cameras

Langley Township - Other Forms of  Illegal Dumping

CBC - Dumping off a 30 metre Cliff in Parksville Continue

Recycling Council of BC - Report on Illegal Dumping (opens as a pdf)

Why do Home Renovation Shows always Smash Stone Counter Tops?

I have a pet peeve with home renovation shows. It doesn't matter what show it is but... on Demo Day... they all tend to go in and just smash up perfectly good kitchen cabinets and stone counters. Why??? It seems like such a waste. A waste of money, a waste of materials, a waste of... well... waste. All that stuff has to go somewhere, into some landfill somewhere. I know it looks good on TV but... seriously?

Fixer Upper - Chip & Joanna Gains

There are some shows where they will actually take out the cabinets carefully and say that they are sending them off to be repurposed. But those shows are in the definite minority. Maybe it costs too much to lift out stone counter tops? Easier and cheaper to just smash everything with a sledge hammer?

We did a kitchen reno last year and there was no smashing involved. A couple of friends came over and helped us take the 40 year old cabinets off the walls. It wasn't a lot of fun because some of the cabinet screws had been painted several times but... we got them all down with no smashing. And our friends then loaded up all the cabinets and used them in their garage. These weren't even wood cabinets, just cheap builder-grade laminate/particle board cabinets. But they got a second life.

Our old laminate counter top, on the other hand, did go to the dump. If it had been a long 6 foot stretch, we would have taken it to the ReStore where someone could have used it for something. But... our longest stretch was 8 feet with a big hole in the middle for the double sink sooo... off to the dump it went.

Which just goes to show that it can be done. I've seen people list old kitchens on Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace and sell them. Or just give them away for free. Look in a few open garages in your neighbourhood and you might see a whole plethora of storage cabinets thanks to a kitchen reno.

As for stone counter tops... there are a gazillion YouTube videos about how to take them out in one piece. But then what? Donate it. Sell it. Use it in the garden. Get it cut into tiles. Use it for a fireplace. Use it for mosaic flooring. The possibilities are endless. And the dump should be the last place for stone counters...

Which makes me wonder... all of those home reno shows just tend to toss all the waste into a big dumpster. Does all of that just go into the landfill? Or does someone, somewhere, sort through all of that stuff and pick out the wood and the tile and the insulation and the drywall? At first I thought, Noooo, that can't be but... apparently with environmental laws, there are some things that can't be dumped in the landfill all willy nilly... things like wood and drywall and metal.

I found the local DBL site and... will you look at that... There's a pic of workers sorting through a dumpster load of construction waste. Looks like a pile of drywall in the background. Go figure... so they DO recycle all that stuff. At least... here they do.

DBL workers sorting through construction waste
(from DBL site)

But... the Gold Star for limiting the amount of waste goes to another company called... Unbuilders. Because, it's not just kitchen renos that create waste. There are also whole houses that get demolished. And those often go something like this...

House Demo via Wikipedia

Yup, just get a digger machine and start tearing away at it... then load it all into a dumpster and send it off for sorting and disposal. Again... seems like such a waste.

But... Ta-daaaaahhh!!! Unbuilders to the rescue! They are a Vancouver company that unbuilds houses... Check out this 1 minute YouTube video of them unbuilding a house.

Smart, eh? Because some of those houses have old-growth timber in them (used up until the 1970s) and that stuff is pure gold in today's market. While traditional demo companies take the wood to be chipped and burned as fuel... Unbuilders sees a better use, a second life, for ancient lumber.

Yes, unbuilding takes longer and costs more but... there are a few other things to consider. Homeowners who go the way of unbuilding qualify for a tax credit. So even though Unbuilders cost $45,000 for a traditional home ($10,000 more than a regular demolition), the tax credits allow the homeowner to come out ahead with big savings. 

Stack of salvage lumber from Unbuilders site

The Unbuilders salvage anything and everything - metal pipes, wiring, wooden floors, sinks, appliances. Their current record for a single home is 96.8 per cent of materials salvaged or recycled and diverted from the landfill. The only things that can't be recycled or salvaged are vinyl flooring and asphalt shingles.

It's nice to know that there are companies out there that don't just crash and smash and toss. And... the Unbuilders have come to Vancouver Island too!! Excellent news...

P.S. Second Pet Peeve

The habit of home renovation shows to call everything "granite". Not all stone is "granite"! There's marble, soapstone, labradorite, granite, basalt, gneiss, granodiorite, gabbro, diorite and... a whole array of stone that is used to make counters. None of which are "granite" although some could be called "granitic".

Granite, geologically speaking, is a very specific rock type with a very specific ratio of minerals like quartz, two types of feldspar, mica and maybe some amphiboles. This is granite... see the pink feldspar... typical of granite.

These... are NOT granite... although they are called "granite" by home design/decor/renovation folks. Sigh. Sloppy language...

Waste Not, Want Not at Christmas

The average Canadian tosses out 50 kg of garbage during the holiday season. That's 25% more than normal. Which means... we toss out about 12 kg of pure Christmas waste. Which, for those of us who are not quite metricized with weights yet... about 25 lbs of Christmas waste. That's an awful lot of wrapping paper...

When I was a kid, my Mom had us save everything! She grew up during the war and learned "waste not, want not" from her parents. At Christmas, we'd take a paring knife and carefully slice under the tape wrapping each gift. No wild tearing of wrapping paper. We would then carefully take off the bow and the name tag (which was taped to one of the bow's tails). We would then fold the wrapping paper carefully and set it aside. Paper went into one brown paper bag. Bows went into another. Ribbons went into another. Name tags into another. All saved for next year. We had the most organized Christmas unwrapping you've ever seen! And we hardly ever had to buy reams and reams of wrapping paper. We would just sort through the old paper from previous years and find a size that worked for the current wrapping project. Eventually, of course, the paper would die but by that point, it gone through at least five, possibly ten Christmases.

Nowadays... things are different... there's only my partner and I and we tend to have different Christmas wrapping systems. My partner is more in the gift bag with tissue paper camp. Whereas I tend to be more in the wrapping paper camp. We do still try to unwrap carefully but... it's not always possible. Although... the gift bags are reused from year to year. And we do try to reuse the tissue paper as well. On top of that, we generally only buy gift bags and rolls of gift wrap from the thrift store and never new. Same with bows and ribbons. It seems like a waste to buy new wrapping paper that will only have a few days of glory before it is torn to shreds and tossed in the trash.

Which got me thinking... what exactly is recyclable when it comes to Christmas waste? The list is shorter than you might think.

Bows

We all have these in our house. We have a whole shoe box full of them. But we never really use them. They don't mail all that well... And for our own presents we tend not to use the bows. They just leave a ripped paper spot where the tape was used to hold them down. And be-bowed presents don't stack all that well.

And they are most definitely not recyclable. Once these bows die (too bedraggled to be reused), they have only one final destination... the garbage.

Instead of a ribbon... maybe put a sprig of cedar or fir on the gift... or a flattish Christmas ornament... All sorts of different ways to spruce up a gift that don't need plastic...

Ribbons

We have another box full of spools of various ribbons. Different colours, sizes, textures. All of them are made from some form of plastic. None of them are recyclable. And if they end up in the recycling stream, they can stop the whole production line when they get tangled around the machinery. Every gotten a string tangled in your vacuum cleaner roller brush? Or around your weed whacker? You know what I mean. Ya gotta stop and spend five or ten minutes trying to untangle that rats's nest. Now scale that up to a recycling facility. Not fun.

Back when I was a kid, we tended to use fabric ribbons, satin or velvet or tule that could be untied and reused over and over again. But fabric ribbons tend to be a bit limp... not like those vibrant plastic curls you get when you pull a ribbon over the edge of a scissor... Those are so much more exciting and sparkly! Not.

We don't really use ribbons anymore except for some mailed presents... but even there... I'm thinking it might be better to ditch the ribbons completely and swap it out for rafia or twine or something equally rustic. Heck, maybe even some satin ribbon from the thrift store! The thing I've noticed is... if we have it in the house, we'll use it. So maybe the trick is to  get rid of it... donate it to the thrift store and swap it out for something more eco-friendly. If you're looking to buy plastic ribbon... don't but it new... go check out the thrift store. Odds are they'll have reams of the stuff.

Wrapping Paper

Not all wrapping paper is paper. Nope, some of it is plasticized and that stuff is most definitely NOT recycable. Here's the no-go list:

• no glitter - none. Not on the paper. Not on the ribbons. Not on the gift cards. As anyone who has used glitter knows... that s*%t gets everywhere!
• no velvet - I thought velvetized paper went out of fashion in the 70s but... apparently not.
• no foil - if you can see vague reflections of yourself in your shiny wrapping paper, odds are it has foil in it or on it. Not recyclable. It's not aluminum foil. It's plastic foil. If you crumple it and it doesn't stay crumpled... it's plastic.
• no holographic material - plastic...
  

Sooo... what's the solution? Plain old gift paper - made out of 100% paper CAN be recycled.

Best place to buy gift wrap... your local thrift store. They usually have rolls and rolls of the stuff and odds are you can find something that fits your theme.

For a few years, my partner and I just bought white wrapping paper and used different colours of ribbons and bows on it. That looked really sharp but... that means using ribbons. Although it would work with fabric ribbons too.

I'm thinking that brown paper tied with string and maybe stencilled with some cool ink stamps would look really nice too. And then a sprig of evergreen with a Christmas ornament or something.

As for us... we are using up our stash of wrapping paper (no glitter, foil, velvet, etc) but I think we are going to be making a pact not to buy anymore wrapping paper. Or ribbons. Or bows.

I know I said up there that actual paper wrapping paper (!) can be recycled but... there are caveats. Winnipeg, for example, says no to wrapping paper because the ink is too intense and it's too hard to get it out. So check with your local municipality...

Oh... and tissue paper can be reycled as well, as long as it is straight-up tissue paper with no extras. No glitter. No sparklies.

If wrapping gifts is your thing, fly at 'er! Just keep the above in mind...

Gift Bags

Most gift bags are plasticized. Even if they look like they're paper... unless you can tear it easily... it likely has a plastic coating either on the inside or outside. Which means most gift bags are NOT recyclable.

A better option is pure paper bags. I was looking online and am starting to see brown paper bags with handles and Christmas decorations. The question then becomes... what are the bag decorations made of? Any glitter... not recyclable. Any velvet? Or anything 3-dimensional? Not recyclable.

I'm also seeing some gift bags that might look like fabric (they aren't like the regular stand up bags but more flowy) but are really foil or some variation of plastic. Not recyclable...

But... gift bags made from real fabric, with real cord (not plastic ribbons) are a definite alternative. If I was a sewer... er... a seamstress... I'd be making gift bags out of fabric from the thrift store. Fabric bags can last forever and are washable and reusable. Just not recyclable...

Gift Cards

We haven't bought new holiday gift cards for years. I just trot down to the thrift store around Christmas time and stock up on different cards. They're usually $0.25 each and I know that my money is going to a good cause.

As for whether or not they are recyclable... some are and some aren't. If you read the no-go list for gift wrap above... it's the same with gift cards. Musical gift card? Not recyclable. Glitter or foil or velvet or three dimensional doo-dads and weird textures? Not recyclable. Although... you likely can tear off the paper half that is recyclable.

Christmas Trees

Real or fake? That is the enduring question. Basically... either one is not great on the environment. The best option would be to have a real tree in a pot that you then plant in your backyard. If you already have a fake tree, then keep it and make it last for at least 20 years. If you get a new fake tree every few years, you'd be more eco-friendly if you just got a real tree every year. Or... go down to the thrift store, odds are they have a number of fake trees on display... and you can save one from being landfilled. If you are going to get a real tree... make sure you don't drive a long distance to get the tree and/or buy it from a local Christmas tree farm (not one of those Home Depot trees that come via rail from across the country!).

Our fake tree is about 15 years old and still going strong. It's a tall, skinny tree with faux fir, spruce and pine twigs - a very unnatural combination! But it works and we like it. So we'll keep it. If it ever dies... we'll likely go with either a thrift store tree or a local Christmas tree farm one. Or maybe cut our own under the power lines... Oh, and just to be clear, fake Christmas trees are not recyclable, too many different plastics and metals all tangled together...

If you do get a real tree, for goodness sake, dispose of it responsibly. Most municipalities have some form of real Christmas tree recycling options. Bring it to a central collection point and they will be chipped to form mulch.

But here's the thing... tinsel is NOT mulchable. If your tree looks like this (pic at right)... with tinsel tossed willy nilly everywhere... you might want to reconsider your use of tinsel. Because odds are, you won't be able to get every single piece of tinsel off of the tree before you take it to be mulched...

Growing up, we always had tinsel (or lametta) on the tree but it was hung in small bunches on the branch tips, the final touch to decorating the tree. At the end of the Christmas season, we carefully gathered up every bunch of tinsel and placed it in organized bundles in paper towel, to be reused the following year. And the year after that... and the decade after that. I still have our childhood bunches of tinsel (decades later). The stuff lasts forever! Except... we never use it because cats and tinsel do NOT mix... So, the tinsel is going into the thrift store donation box where hopefully someone else will use it... in a sustainable and eco-friendly way.

I'm not even going to touch on Christmas tree decorations. So many of them nowadays are plastic. We have quite a stash of vintage Christmas balls that are made from thin glass... love them.

We don't buy new Christmas tree decorations every year, but just keep reusing what we have. We don't have themed Christmases or any particular colour that we go for. In fact... you don't need a lot to make a cute tree...

We spent one winter on Salt Spring Island at a vacation rental (our five month foray to see if my partner could survive a rainy West Coast winter). We got our tree from under the power lines (a first for my partner), put it in a pail with rocks and decorated it with strings of popcorn and rose hip berries. We scrounged some bits of holly, baby's breath and shreds of arbutus bark. And tucked a few small stuffed animals into the branches.

It was the cutest tree ever and we still remember it, and the whole adventure that went with it, very fondly.

We don't have to buy into the Christmas marketing fiasco... we can choose to go simple and rustic. It's usually cheaper and better for the environment.

Devolution of a Dispable Cup

As I've been hiking through the forests and parks, I've started noticing garbage on the ground. And picking it up to carry it out to a garbage can. It's obvious that some of the garbage has been there for a while... And with a bit of sleuthing, I have created a photo timeline of "Devolution of a Disposable Cup". A Tim Horton's cup. It's not that I have a bone to pick with Tim Hortons... it's just that those are the cups that I see lying on the ground in parks and forests...

Here's what happens to a disposable cup over time in the forest...

Stage 1

First, a pristine Tim Hortons cup, with or without plastic lid, gets tossed on the ground somewhere. Perhaps the person who tossed it things that it is made from paper and that it will decompose. Not sure what they thought about the lid... The thing is... the inside of the cup is lined with a thin film of plastic...

Stage 2

Here we have a cup after at least one winter, as evidenced by the cones and needles on the cup. There is also new growth over top of the cup, so it has lain outside since at least last fall - let's say 9 months. You can still see the reddish colouring which makes me think it's a Tim Hortons cup...

Stage 3

We then move to this stage - all the colouring is gone. It could be a Tim Hortons cup or... a McDonald's cup or... Starbucks. I'm going to guess at least a year out in the woods.

Stage 4

We now come to this one... most of the outer paper coating is gone, leaving us with a rather odd shaped sleeve. How long did it take to get to this point? A year and a half? Two years?

Stage 5

Until we reach this stage... pure, clean, unadulterated plastic sleeve. When I first found this in the bush, I was a bit perplexed as to what it could be but... then... I picked it up and...

See... it's the bottom of a cup... it's the interior plastic film from a disposable cup...

It is quite sturdy and it took a bit to tear it... but there you have it... plastic sleeve from a disposable cup. How long has that been in the woods? Two years? Three years? How much longer would it have lasted? Decades.

I should also mention, that I have picked up disposable cups somewhere between Stage 1 and Stage 2 and found gnaw marks on them, with chunks missing from the rim. Obviously, some little squirrel or mouse or vole or other critter, liked the taste of milk or sugar or whatever was in the cup and decided to snack on it. Which means that little critter ingested plastic. I wonder how well that went through its intestinal system? Or if it caused a blockage and the little critter died in agony...

Let's be clear. Disposable does not mean Compostable. If it did... it would say that. Really, the word "disposable" is a misnomer... a better choice might be "trashable"...

It might make us aware of the utter insanity of what we are doing. Tim Hortons produces 2 billion trashable cups every single year. That's 2,000,000,000... and let's be clear. They are NOT recyclable. They are NOT compostable. They are lined with plastic. Plastic never goes away... it just takes hundreds of years to degrade into smaller and smaller pieces... which will eventually find their way into streams, lakes, rivers and oceans. Where they will be ingested by phytoplankton and krill and migrate up the food chain... with all the toxins that accompany a petrochemical product... Where we will eventually ingest them in our salmon or tuna... And we wonder why cancer rates are increasing. Please, please... if you love the squirrels... and the birds... and the salmon and oceans and lakes and rivers and forests... and your children or your grandchildren... Just say NO to Trashable cups.

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.

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?

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?

Books, Books and More Books

I love books. I'm not going to call myself an addict but... I really, really love books.

My love affair with books started when I was a kid. For the longest time, I kept one of my favourites... I am a Bunny by Ole Risom with illustrations by Richard Scarry.

It was quite tattered and apparently 3-year-old-me thought Nicholas the Bunny needed glasses because on each page, I drew a set of glasses on him. Not sure why... since no one in my family wore glasses, least of all me! But there you go... don't give a kid a book and a pen...

When I entered grade school, I was introduced to the wonderful world of Scholastic Book Services.

Favourite horse stories

Oh my goodness... the flyers and order forms would get handed out at school in the fall and spring and I would peruse all the offerings and make my selections - usually animal stories... particularly horse stories. I still have three of my favourites: Old Bones: the Wonder Horse, Blitz and Blanco: The Legend of the White Stallion.

But Scholastic Book Services cost money and so my Mom introduced me to the public library. Whoa... soooo many books! At the time, our public library had a super cool kids section. It was a big room that was almost two stories high. A set of stairs led to an upper level which was a balcony that ran around three sides of the room. There were books up top and... the area underneath the balcony was made of up of several shallow cave-like chambers. The ceiling was so low that adults had to duck down to get into each chamber. There were book shelves on three sides of each chamber and... it was the coolest thing ever for a kid... an Aladdin's cave of undiscovered treasure.

I would usually totter out of the library with a massive stack of books and gobble them up over the next week or two. Loved the library.

At the same time... I was a relatively easy kid when it came to Christmas and birthdays... just buy me books: Hardy Boys, Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, anything by Rutherford Montgomery, The Black Stallion...

Library card catalogue - how times have changed

As I moved through the education system, I dabbled in the school libraries... also good, but not as memorable... and then came university.

I loved the twisting rabbit-warrens of UBC's Main Library stacks but the university library didn't really stock a lot of fiction (unless it was 100+ years old!).

While attending UBC, I never got connected with the the Vancouver Public Library system. I think I went there once and requested a library card. Turns out that people living in UBC dorms were not considered Vancouver tax-payers sooo... no pay taxes, no get library card.

It became a bit of a moot point because I started earning some money and was able to feed my book appetite. Science fiction... westerns... mysteries... history novels... I acquired my own library at home.

The only problem was... I moved a lot... on average once every year... and after a while, packing up all those books became a chore. Not to mention I was running out of bookshelf space. And so I'd regularly declutter my books. I don't have my Cadfael books anymore. Nor my Dick Francis, Sharpe, Ramage, Pern, Star Trek, Stainless Steel Rat, Anne Perry or Louis L'Amour books. I still bought and read a lot of books... I just didn't keep them for very long. Kind of... errr... disposable convenience... ***cough*** (The irony of this is not lost on me...).

After a while, my book-buying habit became a bit expensive. Books aren't exactly cheap... a novel nowadays costs around $20. I used to travel a lot and passing through an airport was dangerous for me. I'd wander through the Virgin or Relay bookstores behind security and easily see a dozen books that looked super interesting. Even though I had at least two or three books with me, I would usually end up buying another one or two.

Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten about libraries... but not really. I completed online applications for a library card in Prince George and, later, in Calgary... but I never set foot in the actual buildings and definitely never borrowed a book. I had gotten out of the library habit and established a book-buying habit. Which was fine when I had enough disposable cash to satisfy my book cravings... but not so fine when we went on a year-long sabbatical and found ourselves on a budget.

One of MANY Bookie Monsters out there

My book-buying was cut off and I went into serious book-withdrawal. I became the Cookie Monster of books - The Bookie Monster. [Believe it or not... I thought I had come up with something new and cool with that little rhyme but... Bookie Monster is already a "thing"!]

I bought an e-book reader, figuring that e-books were easier to schlep around and less expensive but... honestly... reading an e-book is not the same as a real book. And e-books, even though they are cheaper than real books, are not exactly "cheap".

I discovered AbeBooks - an online bookstore where I could buy second-hand books from all over the world. Better, but still not great... not for someone with as voracious an appetite as myself.

During our sabbatical, we moved to the Island and... at that point... I rediscovered the public library. A whole new world opened up. I was amazed to discover that libraries have come a loonnnnggg way since the days of card catalogues and microfiche.

Everything is online... even inter-library loans... It's super-convenient and utterly magical. Our library system is even more magical because it's a regional library. We have three physical libraries in our city, but they are not the be all and end all. There are three dozen libraries in other communities that feed our regional library. That's a lot of books. And it's so easy... go online, search for the book I'm interested in and request it be delivered to my local branch. Bing. Done. The book gets delivered... sometimes within a few days... other times... a few months.

Cover - Atomic Habits
by James Clear

That's the only thing... getting books via the library requires patience. This is not going to feed the instant gratification monster within me. Because even though we have 36+ library branches... other people have discovered the library too and the hold lists can be long. Particularly if the book is new and hot.

For example, I put a hold on Atomic Habits (James Clear) a few weeks/months back. I had seen it in an airport bookstore and took a picture of the cover (my new habit) and then added it to my "To Read" list. When I got home, I requested it via the library. Except our library system "only" has 12 copies... and there are 119 holds... of which I am #37... sigh... Patience, Young Grasshopper, patience.

On the other hand, receiving an email from the library informing me that a book I've been waiting for is ready to be picked up... ooohhh... it's like Christmas!! I can't wait to scamper to the library and bring the book home and start reading.

I use the hold system with gusto... I currently have nine books on hold. The only thing is... sometimes a bunch of them come in at around the same time and I find myself dealing with an over-abundance of riches. I generally tend to have more than one book on the go at any one time but... even I can get overwhelmed by the pressure of reading four or five books in three weeks. I am learning to rein in my book ordering bug...

There is one more thing that I like about the library... I know that getting a book through the library means it's going to be a well-used book. It's going to be read by more than one set of eyes (mine). When I buy a book from the bookstore... I will often only read it once and then let it go by donating it to a thrift store. It might get read again... or maybe not. Thrift store bookshelves do NOT use the Dewey Decimal system... and trying to find a specific book is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack... with no guarantee that the needle you are seeking is even IN the haystack! Given how many books get donated to thrift stores... it's only understandable that at some point... books end up going to the landfill.

You see... books are incredibly hard to recycle due to the glue in the binding. Our city's recycling system accepts magazines, catalogues and phone books (ummm... glue in binding?) but not paperbacks or hardcovers. I know that some cities accept paperback books for recycling but not if they have ever gotten wet or if the paper has turned brown. This is a bit of a problem... and so I am trying to emphasize the Reduce and Reuse aspects of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

I still buy the occasional new physical book but only when I absolutely CANNOT wait for it and expect to use it long-term. I do buy e-books a bit more frequently and I still get some second-hand books via AbeBooks. If I'm going to buy books though, most of them come via thrift stores or garage sales. They are cheap and I don't feel bad about reading them and letting them go again, back into the pool of second-hand books from whence they came. But... ultimately... the library is my biggest source of reading material.

The 2018 value of our library cards

The Board of our regional library has an annual report in which, amongst other things, they report on the "value of a library card".

In 2018, based on the number of users and the value of materials borrowed... the average value of a library card was $661.

That number intrigued me and I once counted up the number of books I borrowed in a year and my value was well over $800. That's $800 that stayed in my pocket!

In many ways... getting books from the library ticks a bunch of boxes.

• It's good for me and my finances (more books available to read; less money spent on books, less square footage devoted to book storage, less hassle moving, teaches me patience).
• It's good for the environment (more reads/book).
• It's good for my community (more library patrons=bigger budget=more books).
• It might, however, not be so good for authors (less books sold).

I haven't even touched on all the other services offered through our local library: DVDs, CDs, audio books, magazines, podcasts, online language courses, research services, internet access, study space etc, etc... Heck, our library even has a puzzle table where there is always a 1000 piece puzzle on the go... cool! And it's all... FREE!***

For me, reconnecting with the pubic library system is one small step in living sustainably. It might not be as convenient as ordering a book via Amazon Prime but... I'll trade that for sustainable living... in this instance at least!


***Well... as long as you are a resident of the city in which the library is located. Which means somewhere along the line you are paying property taxes which then go toward supporting your local library. So not really "free" but... why not max out as much value from property taxes as possible by wringing out as much use from the library as possible!