Letters

Jeff Green | Oct 05, 2006

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Letters to the Editor

With the news of Toronto's garbage continuing woes receiving lots of print and air time, you have to ask how much of their problem is due to poor effort on the part of the city's residents, and how much relates to the percentage of material that people are simply unable to recycle?

In South Frontenac township, for example, we can't recycle #3 and #7 plastic. Apparently, some plastic liquor bottles are made of #3, and ketchup bottles and most squeezable containers are made of 7. It seems really obscene to throw these big ketchup bottles out. Why can't this stuff be recycled? If it can't be recycled, why doesn't the government develop incentives to make it recyclable, or ban its use?

At the same time, have you noticed how many plastic items (especially lids from many different containers) have no recycling number at all? The manufacturers have no problem putting all kinds of other information on them (e.g., their name, other numbers apparently relating to production) but can't be bothered to say what plastic they're using. I've found that Kraft is bad this way, as is Johnson & Johnson ("a family company"). Again, I think it's high time legislation was passed requiring all plastics to carry recycling numbers. It's not as though this is impossible: I've noticed that all the disposable parts of the ink cartridges for my Canon printer carry these symbols. This isn't moot: I once read that more steel is used annually in the USA to make beer bottle caps than to make automobiles. Plastic bottle caps must add up as well.

- Stephen Dukoff