Oscar The Grouch

Joseph has worked for the same environmental consultancy for almost three years now. In this time, he has gone out on numerous site visits - generally a few of them each month - sometimes more, sometimes less. I've always been interested in what exactly goes on @ these visits - they generally occur late @ night or in the early, early morning and I was aware that they involved large quantities of rubbish and recycling, but that he generally returns home in the dead of night not smelling like garbage. He would tell me about these visits and I even saw photos, but I was still curious. Besides, I'm always curious to see how things work and this includes those super huge office towers and shopping malls and whatnot - heading into the belly of the beast or behind the scenes of anything just has instant appeal for me.

Well, last night I got my big chance. One of Joseph's coworkers has not been feeling well and, as one might imagine, heading out late @ night to stand around garbage is not really a recipe for great health. So, I was volunteered. I was excited - Joseph and I would be like the Peter and Marie Curie...of garbage and recycling. Glamour-rama. We headed out shortly after 11pm and I was feeling quite grouchy and sleepy and not exactly loving that I had made the decision to help out. At that point I would have much rather been finishing up the baseball game in my pajamas. We arrived @ the site - it was two big office towers in downtown Toronto, along with some retail/food court space that joins the towers. We headed down into the loading dock area - a massive underground space that was both silent and deafening, with the sounds of industrial fans and other stuff that keeps the buildings happy. Joseph worked @ one end and I started @ the other end. We weighed a sampling of garbage and recycling bags from all of the different areas of the buildings. Then, I stepped right up and started counting - moving bags from one pile to another as I did so. Joseph also took photos of the whole operation and did some other more advanced stuff that would be unsuitable for a newbie like me.

The experience was more difficult and more gross than I had previously imagined. I thought that Joseph did more standing about, aloof-ly observing the garbage and recycling, but no - you're really all in there. With gloves and boots [okay, I wore my skull trainers, I don't have special boots] and everything. I should also point out that I have an ultra-sensitive nose [and ears, too]. This is not the greatest thing on a night like last night. Joseph had previously complained about the stale coffee smell, particularly that of Tim Horton's coffee. To be honest, I didn't smell stale coffee [which to me always smells acutely like cigarettes] - but I did smell a lot of other unpleasantness. I found this odd as the rubbish was all fresh - just from that day - how can it already smell so bad? Also, a great number of the bags had split and all sorts of grossness [think bathroom refuse] came a-tumbling out. Thankfully, none of it got on me [my shoes got a bit sticky] and I was very conscientous about not touching my face/hair/glasses and then giving myself a thorough dousing of Purell. It was pretty exhausting work - and not just because of the late hour [I had been pretty relaxed all day - Joseph had worked eight hours already]. The slinging around of garbage and recycling was quite physically demanding and reminded me of how much I hate manual labour [and how much I admire those people that do it].

In conclusion - people are gross. Without giving away any trade secrets of Joseph's company or the buildings we were completing the waste audit on - the results were really disappointing. Yes, people are recycling...but mostly what people are doing is producing mass amounts of waste. Also, people still haven't figured out what is recyclable and what is not...or maybe they just don't care. It's extremely discouraging to see - especially as so much of what is in the garbage is stuff that you really don't need or that you could have in a different, more "green" way. Take, for example, the dreaded coffee cups. A casual estimate would say that 90% of the coffee cups were from Tim Hortons. The others were mostly Timothy's and maybe one or two [seriously, that's all I saw] were from Starbucks. Tim Hortons generally serves up standard coffees and teas and hot chocolates - not the fancy flavoured espresso type drinks. If you want Tim Hortons coffee [I'm not sure why you would - their coffee tastes like a combination of cigarettes and turpentine] you could very easily bring them a reusable travel mug and they will fill it up [and likely give you a discount]. Sometimes the fancy coffee places don't like to do this with their espresso drinks as the baristas use their cups to measure ingredients...but they will also do this [and discount you] for their standard coffee and tea. *sigh* I can see now why Joseph finds his job frustrating...I think that a lot of people that work in the environmental industry generally don't interact so forcefully with the environment so they can feel like they are making a difference. Last night showed me that we have so, so far to go. I think people are getting better @ recycling and reducing @ home...but they stop thinking about garbage when they don't have to drag it to the curb every week. Out of sight, out of mind. I would estimate that one's garbage might be doubled if you had to account for all of the rubbish you dispose outside of one's home.