The path to zero waste can be lonely

If one takes it from a micro, albeit dramatic viewpoint, that is, indeed, the path literally to zero waste here in a temperate country could be a solitary one, with mild dangers, too. Figure how and when we toss out our waste, especially in winter—where bins stand outside the building like ours along deserted lane ways. 

Wedged between back walls or terraces lined with parked cars, the lane way stretches with shadows—either sinister or romantic on early evenings, with or without the moon when, for most people like me, the best or only time to lug separate bags of paper, containers, especially waste (soiled plastic bags and #s 3&6 packing materials or containers) and feed these into wide-mouthed bins. It had felt scary being alone, at first, especially in the half-light of a new or waning moon, and, indeed, like they say, you breathe life into your fears.

I did one evening when a black, thickly furred animal engaged me with its bulb-like eyes in a stand off. Ignorant of what it was, I’m embarrassed to admit that its ferocious crouch intimidated me so much so that I wanted to run, but feeling the stones on my sole, I half-bended in the ready to pick up one. But a car soon blasted its headlights on us, and the animal scampered into the darkness. I later learned that a rabid raccoon, notorious for its garbage-scouring tricks, dared me; “it could have leaped at you,” warned a friend.

Apparently safe another early dusk, a powerful stench wrapped me on my way back to the gate, where an apple tree had started budding. Already a few meters away from the garbage enclosure, I had thought it couldn’t be rotting exotic food. Just then, Dili, my friend’s white cat dashed out of the fence flustered, twisting as if trying to shake off an invisible foe that had gripped him; at this point, Debbie came out, shouting, “Oh my, a skunk sprayed Dili!” I still cringe at the thought of meeting one.

And what about the spring morning, when in a change of schedule, I tossed out cardboard boxes that I had spent the night before jumping on to flatten. Rushing back through the courtyard, I felt something like a giant bee zip past my cheek, leaving me stunned about what I had thought was a superpower dragonfly. Donna, a penthouse resident just then wheeled in on her motorbike. As we talked, the creature whooshed right back by my nose, onto a clump of lilies of the valley in the courtyard, remaining on wings as it sipped the flowers. She exclaimed, “a hummingbird!” What a wonder, my first.

But my loneliest yet most satisfying trek begins in the kitchen when I line a green pail with newspaper pages that I fold into the shape of a bag for any food and plant waste. It ends with an elevator ride to the underground parkade, where only loud echoes follow my steps to an organic garbage green bin by its own set against a wall like a sentry facing the rollup electronic gate.

Almost a sacred rite, for me, when I let slide the newspaper bag that by then has become so shaped it feels solid into the bin that in a week would be full and ready for composting–one day, up-cycled as mulch, it would have nourished hydrangeas and pears, just as other waste in the bins could turn up as something else in life’s cycle, though never for the PVCs and Styrofoam now confirmed indestructible.

With all these, somehow Vancouver’s dream of zero waste—long talked about in conferences, some of which I’ve attended—has since stepped up, even transformed me, not so much from the scare about climate change but rather a caring for Earth, no matter the lonely, nay, poignant paths. For if, indeed, it’s a source life, why stuff it with deathly waste?