From: xtkmg@trentu.ca (Kate Gregory)
Subject: Re: Diapers and the Environment (Was Re: Diaper Services)
Organization: Trent University, Ontario
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 21:53:48 GMT

In article <owens.721505833@gargoyle.uchicago.edu> owens@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Christopher Owens) writes:
>In <9NOV199214061524@trentu.ca> bwolfe@trentu.ca (BEN WOLFE) writes:
>
>> [...] two dozen generations in the future, the disposable diapers we
>> threw away in 1992 after reading corporate misinformation will still
>> be sitting in landfill sites.
>
>So will the newspapers we threw away.  So will the banana peels we
>threw away.  In a modern, properly run landfill, *nothing decomposes*.
>Diapers are a part of the problem, but not, apparently, a big one.
>
>I agree that it is a powerful symbolic issue.  As to whether tossing
>disposables makes sense relative, say, to stripping the Rocky
>Mountains of water, shipping it 1000 miles to an area that would
>otherwise be a desert (Los Angeles), and then squandering that
>precious water to wash diapers, I honestly don't know.

I think the American posters on this thread are not grasping what
life is like where Ben and I live (by coincidence we live within
an hour of each other, but much of Canada treats garbage and water
in the way I'm about to describe).

I live in the country and do not have garbage pickup in the usual
sense. We recycle, compost, and set aside to be burned at the dump
all but one small grocery bag a week of garbage. Yellow Pages forming
a distinctive yellow strata in the dump? Not any more, and I buy
Yellow Pages paper towels -- that's what they are recycled, unbleached,
into. Yes, I try to use cloths as much as possible but we do use
some paper towels. Newspapers? One a week plus the freebies, and
we recycle them all. Banana peels? The vegetable waste compost (it
actually makes compost for the garden). Dinner scraps? The Green
Cone (which doesn't make compost but does make garbage go away).

We are on a well and our sewage and grey water go to a septic
tank and leach field beside our house. We do not squander precious
water by washing things. I know this is hard for Californians to
accept but we have lots and lots of clean pure water and we can
wash things in it all we want and that is better for us than
throwing things away.

In Ontario, telling people to recycle newspapers and cans and
bottles would get you laughed at, because we're all doing it.
Participation in curbside recycling programs is 80-90% or more!
People here recycle, they buy products made from post-consumer
waste (paper towels, toilet paper, laser printer paper), they
choose products with less packaging. On Canadian Sesame Street
the Three R Musketeers remind kids to Reduce Reuse and Recycle.
It is not counterproductive for us to talk about the enviromental
impact of disposable diapers. We are not ignoring all the big stuff
to focus on diapers. Things are different here.

Good luck to the Americans who are focusing on newspapers and
banana peels. Hope you catch up to us soon :-). Perhaps your
water situation will never allow people to settle properly
in places like LA, but that doesn't mean it generalizes to
the rest of the continent, right?

Kate