Our Wedding

I am getting married on July 4th. We've decided to make it an environmentally friendly wedding. Well, as best as we can anyways.

I find that at social events, disposable plates, cutlery, and glasses are used once and thrown out. That is the norm in our society for most things: use it once, throw it out. Just think of all that packaging that holds our food together and protects it from air, molds, water, and everything else that can ruin food.

We use it once, and throw it out. Some people can't even learn to recycle, and they feel that they have the right to put as much stuff in the garbage as possible. For instance, the Toronto city strike is hapenning right now and almost immediately, people began throwing their garbage in local parks to prove some sort of point (we can assume).

My downstairs neighbours feel that they NEED to throw out 2 bags of garbage every week. They appealed to the city of Brampton and were not successful. I tried to get them to recycle, but they have lame excuses like "I've got a kid" or "I don't have room to put it all" or "I get tired going up and down the stairs". Bunch O' bull obviously. Now, they use industrial sized garbage bags and every wednesday I see the outlines of all the most common recyclables like food cans, pop cans, and even 2L pop bottles! And they know that those are recyclable.

So, are you wondering what's in the recycling bin (which they do actually put out)? Well, everything from old winter coats, to shoes. From used tissues, to used Q-tips. From chip bags, to watermellon scraps. A few weeks ago, I removed a brick from their blue box. Like I said, I spoke nicely to them, and received the barage of excuses. They also think that having to pay $1 for the garbage tags is a "cash grab" by the city. I can't allow that blue box of garbage to go into the recycling, so every Wednesday I put on some rubber gloves and go through their garbage which was put in the recycling bin. Since we only produce a small grocery bag of garbage every week, I get out a large garbage bag and put their recycling/garbage in that bag. Apart from the things that mentioned above, I also have removed the following from the recycling bin:

• a blender
• useless plastic toys
• paper towels
• popsicle sticks
• old dead flowers

With some advice, I've come to the conclusion that these are people that will never learn until it becomes legally mandatory or financially burdensome to not recycle. Also, I don't go through their trash with hopes of changing them, but for the planet instead.

Back to my point, we're going to have a greenish wedding. We have bought disposable cups, but they are supposedly biodegradeable and we're getting everyone to re-use their cups. Same things for the forks. We have also asked for non-material gifts, so as to keep out our current possessions from the landfill. Rebecca was kind enough to dedicate her wedding shower gifts to children in Nigeria. The gifts were school supplies and she has given them to a fellow teacher who is from Nigeria and he will be delivering the school supplies this summer.

Getting at people doesn't help and won't change them, so I'm going to lead by example. That is advice that I've received from my sister and Rebecca. Perhaps I should run for Green Party, they are looking for a member in the Brampton-Springdale area.