Environmentalist: cancelling public hearing on garbage laws not good democracy
Posted Mar 14, 2011 10:14:22 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A sustainability activist wants Haligonians to stop worrying about the privacy of their garbage and start thinking “outside the bag” for ways to reduce their trash.
Environmentalist Michael Wadleigh, who is in town to address Saint Mary’s University students for Sustainability Week, says he doesn’t agree with regional council’s decision to cancel last week’s public hearing on a proposal to amend the city’s garbage bylaws.
The proposed changes would have reduced the number of bags allowed for curbside pickup to four and required three of those to be clear.
“I think government takes a bad beating, frankly,” Wadleigh told News 95.7 Monday.
“We should accept collectively, government represents us and if we want to clean up the environment, well, how better to do it through representatives of us and making collective decisions of us and not simply leaving it to volunteerism, by citizens or business, ” said Wadleigh.
Wadleigh points to an anti-packaging movement sweeping Britain where customers will unwrap products they are purchasing and leave the plastic wrap, cardboard and Styrofoam in the store.
He’s encouraging Halifax residents to look at other countries to see what approaches are being used to reduce waste. He also suggests it’s only affluent countries, which contribute the majority of garbage to landfills, which have a notion about waste privacy.
“Talk to your mother and your grandpa and you’ll find that there were no bags,” he said. “We’ve gone crazy in the last 40 years or so, bagging everything, packaging everything. Any doctor will tell you almost all of it is medically unnecessary.”
“If we’ve done it, we can undo it,” he says. “Go back to simply not bringing home as much trash. Then you don’t need as many bags.”
Wadleigh won an Academy Award for his groundbreaking documentary about the 1969 Woodstock Festival. He has been pursuing sustainable initiatives since becoming disenchanted with Hollywood.
