Magda has a story published in Maclean’s magazine. It’s garbage. About garbage, that is.

December 11, 2006
Something rotten in the green bin
North America’s pioneer in composting shuts down, and incinerates
MAGDA KONIECZNA

Every weekday, a transport truck leaves the giant waste-management facility in Guelph’s east end and heads down the highway toward New York. It may not look like a garbage truck, but it’s packed with garbage — specifically, with the apple cores, banana peels, chicken bones, pizza crusts and cat litter that the city’s residents have been carefully sorting into their organic-waste bags all week. When the truck arrives in Niagara Falls, N.Y., all that organic waste is dumped into a giant incinerator at the Covanta Energy facility and, yes, burned.

[...]

To be fair, says Crittenden, the expertise simply didn’t exist when Guelph set up its composter. “Although it was a bit of a disaster, all the other municipalities learned from it,” he says. And Susan Antler of the Composting Council of Canada says it’s been worth it. “Let’s realize we changed society in Guelph,” she urges. Now they just have to change it again.

I remember when Guelph was starting this program. I actually worked at a plant that made the special clear, coloured bags for the wet-dry system. When I worked in Guelph recently and went to the local store I got my food in a clear green shopping bag (when I didn’t decline the bag to reduce my consumption of the earth’s resources).

What happens with waste management in G is important, but what happens in Canada and the world is more important. Good thing I we have our own composting system here at our uptown apartment complex, thanks to magda.