Ontario deserves the bottle-return deposit program!

I just returned from my daily walk.  Have you heard?   Fifteen minutes of Vitamin D a day, keeps the doctor away.  You will never guess what I found.  A triple A battery thrown on the ground as though it were worthless.  It confirmed for me right then that it’s time for part 2 of “Good Recycling can get better”.

On this brisk Sunday afternoon in December, I was already keeping the count in my head--and the count was high today.  You see, this lack of a bottle deposit thing in Ontario has been eating at me for so long, that I keep a mental count without even trying, of how much money I could make if the deposit system were still in practice in Ontario.  Today was about $3 and that’s without even venturing into the ditch.  I’ve been stewing about this for so long, that I even have a very feasible idea for a fun video game the Ontario government can use to introduce the program.   Gamer would  search around a neighborhood, rural area, or building looking for recyclables.  I’m picturing a really cool sound effect as you pick up the can and pop it in your sac.  Of course a tally would be kept to tell you how well you’re doing.  At the end, when you’ve finished your search you can use those points to create anything from a fleece jacket to a house.  I think I could find someone to donate their time for this project—I have a few ‘techies’ in mind even as I write this. 

This letter is going out to the hunters I know, the lovers of fishing I know, the beach going sunbathers, the hikers and the boaters.  This letter is going out to every single one of us who loves to enjoy what grows out of the ground.  This letter is going out to the farmers and the gardeners, the landscapers and the golf course owners.  This letter is going out to every single one of us who profits in some way by what grows out of the ground.  This letter is going out to every single one of us who breathes oxygen.  To everyone who likes to smell the daisies and feel the grass between their toes.

The time has come where we have to stop using our whole planet as a garbage dump.  That’s almost to imply that it would be better in one big pile, but that doesn’t work either does it?  Where will the pile go?  And let me remind you that our landfills are a mixture of organic and inorganic material.  That means that more than half of the garbage will never decompose.  It will never break down, never feed anything else, never even change its shape!   

New Rule: Every manufacturer who sells a product in a non-bio-degradable container, should put a deposit on it.  When we the consumers are done with said container, we return it for that deposit.  Where do we return it?  Well I’ll turn that over to the Government of Canada’s powers that be.  

When my last letter was read by Ted Hsu MP for Kingston and the Islands, he said that "perhaps we could look at expanding the Ontario Deposit Return Program for bottles that currently applies only to alcoholic beverages".  We already pay anywhere from five to forty cents on our bottles of alcohol.  And we pay it gladly, because our Government has made it so.  And that’s been a great success at over 85% return rate through the years!!  Let’s expand that to aluminum cans and bottles with the end game being applied to every single piece of plastic and tin on the market.   Is it too much to ask that the people who profit from the sale of products in recyclable containers be held responsible to some extent for what happens when it’s empty?  I don’t think so.  For the good of the sacred economy, we could even implement some tax breaks I’m sure.

Back to the beach-bunnies and kids who enjoy making sand castles in Picton, someday very soon it won’t be safe or enjoyable to do that.  The hunters will have nothing to hunt, the anglers nothing to angle.  The farmers and gardeners will find it ever more difficult to grow good crops.  The golfers will have to golf on dirt—ouch!  And the landscapers will be cutting lawns with wipper-snippers because the grass won’t grow like it used to.  Oxygen?  Can that be man-made?

For the sake of what grows out of the ground, please voice your desire for the implementation of a deposit system in Ontario. 

Recycling ... the big hoax.

     Walking back from the store just now, I noticed two batteries on the ground within the span of a few steps.  I thought it funny to consider that in other countries, four year olds would be fighting over that valuable find.  Those things are worth something, and yet in Canada we throw them in the trash like they are worthless.  As some of my friends know, I take particular offense to this because I realize how much damage batteries do to our planet when they are not properly disposed of.

The same could be said for much of the trash I see around.  I walk through a high school football field daily to the store or to catch the bus, and I could easily make a few bucks a day simply by collecting the bottles and cans for their deposit.  Except here in Ontario, we don’t do that anymore.  If I lived in Quebec, I and any other tree-huggers could help fight pollution and make some spare change at the same time!  The jig is up….cans and bottles are worth money or they wouldn’t collect them at the curb. 

This brings me to another beef I have with Ontario; recycling in general.  Don’t get me wrong, as many people know, I live and breathe recycling.  And based on the number of blue and grey bins on the curb each week, I am not alone.  I even noticed how neatly my neighbor bound his cardboard last week!  We are a people who want recycling to work.  We see the value in it.  And even though we live in a relatively clean Country, we still see that the need is greater than what we see in our own back yards.  As strange as this sounds, I feel a wave of pride each week when I see all of my neighbors dedicating time to mother nature, and don’t even get me started on the recycling stations I see popping up at even privately owned stores and restaurants!  How great!

You can imagine my despair and sheer and utter disgust when I realized that none of my Governmental industries recycle….at all.  Our Prisons’ kitchens do not recycle.  Our military kitchens do not recycle.  So this got me searching and questioning and what I found was even more depressing.   The recycling stations at your local coffee shop are great in theory, but like so many other programs these days they are really quite a joke.  These bins are not especially user-friendly, and so customers simply throw their waste in whichever bin is closest.  The workers at said coffee shop are not permitted to remove recyclables from the trash.  Therefore if there is even one tissue in the bin for cans and bottles, the whole thing will be trashed.  I wonder if the Government gives them some credit for those bins?  

Let’s look at another polluter.  Grocery and convenience stores throw out immense numbers of plastic garbage.  They would surely set up systems to follow if they were given credit for recycling.  As it stands today, it costs money for stores to recycle.  They have to pay a company to come and pick recyclables up.  What corporation is going to give even a few hundred dollars a year to do something that they don’t have to do?  Unfortunately, it all comes down to the bottom line.  I get that.  I really do.  So why not give some credit to your citizens to have enough pride to pick up trash for money.  Money that they can spend thereby fueling the oh so important economy.

We have now pulled out of the Kyoto program, saving Canada millions of dollars.  Why not spend a tiny drop of that money and initiate a program to inspire your people to clean up the province for you!   At minimum wage, a person would have to pick up about 103 ten cent cans or bottles per hour.  Wow … that’s what I call productivity and a wage well spent!  To illustrate better, at this very moment I could walk across that field and pick up at least fifty recyclable cans and bottles in a matter of about fifteen minutes.

I would like to close by thanking all of my neighbors and fellow Ontarians for doing their part each week and each day to keep the outdoors clean.  But I would also like to compel you to demand better!  We live in the greatest country on the planet.  Let’s demand that it is kept clean!

Advisory for Parents of Working Youth

While updating my resume, adding to it my year long experience working in a local grocery store, I'm thrown into thoughtful reminiscence.  I enjoyed this job, filling displays of fresh produce, assisting shoppers with a kind word, and checking expiry dates.  The hours were even sufficient in the beginning...though the dreaded and ridiculous four hour shift still haunts my dreams.  I mean, four hours’ worth of pay hardly seems worth the fuel to drive in for some people!  But I soon began to see new names on the schedule.  Names of 16 year old boys who had no idea what “Organic” meant or why a customer might request it.  Young high school boys who don't understand why you can't have produce from different countries on the same table, or why bulk potatoes need to be covered at night to prevent sprouting....oh the list goes on.

Why then would the management want to bring in such an unqualified worker when I am there willing to take on the hours?   Initially I wondered if it’s because they can pay that boy a student wage? Great....even though he doesn't know what a Rutabaga is?  But no, our wage was the same.

So is there another reason why the young, naive, and fresh employees get hired and get my hours?  I soon began to realize that perhaps there is, when I finally found new employment and asked for my vacation pay.  Two other young employees gave their notice at the same time, as they were going off to school, and in chatting with them, I advised to watch for their vacation pay cheque which we all were to receive no later than two weeks from our last day worked.  Unfortunately, neither of these young workers knew what I meant or how much their vacation pay might be.....this was the only job they'd ever had!

Three weeks later, two out of three of us had received our cheques.  Cheques that were about a third the amount that they should have been.  It seems head office thought they had already paid us.  Okay.  I contacted my union rep and finally received my due amount.  The others were not so lucky.  One didn't call the union rep, and therefore had to wait until just before Christmas--almost four months later--to receive her payment.  The other has not received his at all, and is too busy with University to deal with it. 

Could it be that this is why some stores hire young people?  Because they can keep their vacation pay and pull the wool over their eyes at every turn?  Is this Capitalism in a small town?  When they’re doing their books, how would this extra money be categorized?  Does “Quickbooks” have a ‘miscellaneous income’ column?  All valid questions.

The vacation pay fiasco was by no means the only lack of disclosure I witnessed.  Our union agreement stated that all employees were due hours in lieu of a civic holiday if you worked that day.  But no one ever told me that.  And I was even told by a union steward that I would know these things if I had attended the union meetings.  I assume this also applies to the 15 and 16 year olds?  So you honestly expect these youth to sit through regular union meetings for a weekend and after-school job?  This is how they are supposed to educate themselves about their employment rights?   Wow…..not exactly full disclosure!  

When you are hired at this store, you are given information on WHMIS, Safety Standards, and what to do if you witness a thief.  But you’re never told that if you work a civic holiday, you get paid extra hours in lieu of time off.   In other words, they are sure to cover any topics that keep their assets covered, but never anything about mine.  In fact, I was told by a past supervisor that she was advised by management not to tell people that they were entitled this extra pay!  Yes….you read that right.

In closing, I would like to take this chance to implore the parents of these fresh, young, after-school employees, to keep an eye on things.  Go over your teen’s pay stub not only to check for discrepancies, but to ensure that they understand their deductions.  Show your teen that this is their responsibility to make sure that they are getting what they deserve and what they've worked for.  It’s a little bit of control that a lot of teens yearn for.  In my limited opinion, this is not how we want our youths’ first employment experience to be.  

Is full disclosure really so detrimental to the success of a business that they would go to these lengths?  Do we not want our youth to grow up aware and in control of their own income?  Perhaps we should consider removing “Romeo and Juliette” from the curriculum and replace it with “Understanding Your Employment Rights”.  Because after all, our youth are our Country’s future, and I want them to be informed.

Bill C-10 The Safe Streets for now Act.

The safe streets and communities act is by far the best example of putting the carriage in front of the horse that I have witnessed in a long time.  The section of which I speak is the minimum mandatory prison sentencing for anyone growing a plant.  This is an act that on the surface sounds like just what our country needs:  to clean up the crime on the streets.   Personally, I feel the streets could be kept cleaner with proper and well distributed recycling bins.  But I digress….that’s a whole other blog.

This act that is being rushed through seems very much like what we need until you think about where the people who commit these “crimes” are going to be sent.  The supporters of this act would like you to give them your approval and support without really thinking about that, and without actually putting yourselves in the shoes of the people who are committing said crimes on our streets.  The supporters of this act would also like you to think that the criminals this act will target, are members of gangs who grow hundreds of cannabis plants to use the proceeds on harder drugs and firearms.

In fact, in an effort to more easily decipher between the gangs and cousin Jake who is experimenting with his green thumb, this act states that anyone growing 6 to 600 cannabis plants will get a minimum 6 months in jail.  Wha?     In my eyes, there’s quite a difference between growing a few plants and having a crop!  The person who is growing six cannabis plants is not doing it to profit!  They’re likely supplying themselves with a sleep aid, an antidepressant, or a pain killer.  And if cousin Jake happens to rent his home, he will get the same length of sentence as a pedephile who sexually abuses a child.  I, along with thousands of like-minded Canadians would like you to know whom this act will target and why it is that they are committing these crimes on our streets.

Let’s start with the why.   Why would someone ever begin to sell a plant?  Because they can’t find a job!   Because how they look isn't being hired these days.   Because the positions that they keep applying for are filled with people who have university and college degrees yet haven’t started their careers.  And the most honest and natural reason why anyone would ever start this “life of crime”?  Because they can make much more than $10.25 an hour selling people cannabis for their migraines, insomnia, depression, or multiple sclerosis !  We have a protest going on right now on wall street in New York city protesting against financial greed.   How is it we expect our young adults to choose a legal profession when everyday they read and hear about corporate greed and examples of successful get-rich schemes?

Let’s finally follow with the ‘who’. The citizens who will be affected by this minimum mandatory prison sentence act are your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters, and your grandchildren.  It’s cousin Jake who likes to smoke cannabis instead of tobacco because alcohol makes it difficult to work the next day.   We can no longer view these ‘criminals’ as anonymous, faceless dredges of society.  Their faces are common and familiar.  They might even be the person who held the door open for you this morning or said “bless you” when you sneezed.

In closing, I would like to give a glimpse of that far off place to which this act will send these ‘criminals’.  Minimum mandatory prison sentences mean one thing that supporters don’t realize.  Putting young Jake in prison longer is like sending him to a six month college program rather than the two week one.  But the classes this college offers are taught by real criminals and murderers.  By putting Jake in this longer program you’re ensuring that instead of missing and wanting to return home, Jake will come out with useful practical knowledge like how to make a pipe bomb, make a ‘shiv’ with a pen, or if he’s taken notes during lectures, he’ll bring home the ingredient list and basic ‘how-to’ for making crystal meth out of cold tablets.  Prison will change Jake . . . and statistically not for the better.  Being immersed in that negative and toxic atmosphere very quickly sucks any hope out of him and from every side he is offered advice and involved in plans for future projects that will set him up for life.  

Upon release, rather than having high hopes for his future do-over, Jake is filled with distrust, vengeance, and a plan to fail harder next time.  This is why this blog has been titled, “ The safer streets and community for now act”.   Because after all, logic tells us that our streets and communities might be safer while these people are in, but when they get released we will see a new kind of hell.  A more dangerous, educated, polished individual deserving of the name:  CRIMINAL. 

Is this what Jake deserves?