The city of Toronto held an emergency meeting on trash today to draft a “contingency plan to handle the city’s garbage and sewage sludge in the event of a border closure.” You see, the U.S. and Canada have been at war, or at least at skirmish, for years over which country is the other’s dump. Michiganders in particular are angry that companies like Waste Management can import foreign trash and deposit it in landfills in their state. In response, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would grant states the right to ban garbage from other countries. The bill is a long way from becoming law and will likely undergo many changes along the way.
Meanwhile, Michigan’s senators are brokering deals with Ontario officials to slow the flow of trash from our neighbor to the North.
Tags: Waste Management
everydaytrash 
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 7:47 pm |
Ah, it looks like the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement lacked the foresight to broker a tandem North American Waste Management Agreement way back when.
I can only imagine all the issues this could bring up – if U.S. states are allowed to ban international trash, what are those states’ options for exporting trash elsewhere? As someone said in the gothamist comments today re the UES transfer station: “Remember, it takes a village. Just don’t put any village infrastructure in my part of the village.”
If we had to deal with our disposing all we consume so close to home, packing tupperware for restaurant leftovers wouldn’t need
to be glammed up; it would be all about the simple desire to not wade through one’s own garbage and and shit.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 10:12 pm |
Thanks for the Gothamist tip, I hadn’t read the comments.