Our western civilization has become distressingly wasteful with our glutony for everything. Our products have become largely disposable. If your microwave or small shelving unit breaks it is more often just tossed in the garbage than ever being repaired. The vast amount of plastic we use and throw out is on its own destroying our planet. It is cheaper for manufacturers to purchase new raw plastic than it is to purchase recycled plastic, so of course very little of our disposed plastic is ever properly recycled. China used to be the world's dumping ground for disposed plastic but they have stopped accepting it fairly recently so much of it lands in massive illegal dumps in places like the Phillipines. Not to mention the millions of tons of it just floating in our oceans.

Thankfully there are some people trying desperately to reverse this trend. Such as the wonderful organization TheOceanCleanup.com. Check out this charity started by Boyan Slat, a young man from the Netherlands and it will give you a glimmer of hope. I don't understand why this type of project isn't much better financed by us humans responsible for this mess. Most cities have terrible waste disposal practices and our City of Ottawa is a perfect example of that stupidity and ineffiency. The city used to hand out and encourage personal backyard composting bins that produced proper useful compost at your own home, that you could then use to fertilize your garden. The green bin program they replaced it with is beyond pathetic. They collect your compostables along with pizza boxes and chicken bones. This is then processed into a very poor quality compost that nobody would want in their garden. I and others wonder just how much of this is then shipped to the dump, where it would have composted itself just fine in the first place. Much of our waste disposal system just seems to be a make-work program for our large crews of hard working men and women.

Our blue and black box recycling is even a worse process. We know that very little plastic is recycled properly yet the city claims there is very little of it not recycled. I don't believe anything they say. And they are apparently sending much of our cardboard to India to be recycled. This is mind boggling stupid. Cardboard is much easier and more profitable to recycle than plastic. If there aren't appropriate facilities available in Ontario they should start building them immediately. It is horrific to me that they are shipping tons of it halfway around the world. So much for saving the environment.

And when our paper and cardboard is left overnight at our curb in the rain it is then worthless to be recycled and definitely is then shipped from the sorting yard to the garbage dump. This is another unacceptable waste of time and money and makes for a miserable day for all of the workers having to handle the sloppy mess. Over in Gatinueau and in many other places they use large tall recycle bins with a cover so they never have this pathetic problem. And it forces people to break down the boxes more so they fit into the big bin. So many people are too lazy to take the few seconds to flatten their cardboard, as they are supposed to do.

Ottawa's mayor Mark Sutcliffe made the promise on his campaign trail that he would look into replacing our Trail Road garbage dump with a modern waste-to-energy plant. Why has this not been done already? Instead they were lazy and complacent and just imposed the three bin limit. A modern waste-to-energy plant is the obvious solution to our growing garbage problem. Forward thinking Sweden is leading the way with this technology and instead of piling and burying their garbage they are burning it. While lowering their overall CO2 emissions, creating much needed electricity and even making money by also burning other countrys' trash. Why the heck isn't every country following this sensible example?

There are so many obvious solutions to these world-wide massive problems that it drives me bonkers that they aren't being pursued already. Pledge your support to me in some way, or tell people about my ideas and help me change the course we continue to propel ourselves down.

I intend to become City Councillor for my Knoxdale-Merivale ward in seventeen months and then become your Mayor of Ottawa in five years. From there I will change the whole world into a much better more sensible place. Please join me in my journey of Love and Hope. Thank You.