Garbage delight

I first heard about Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover in this Globe and Mail article by Dale Duncan. They have a laudable goal: to produce no garbage whatsover in 2007. The article is available on their blog, nomoregarbage, where you can read about how they’re living up to their self-imposed challenge.



Now, I realize this is going to sound a lot like saying I hate puppies, or butterflies, or teeny bedewed spiderwebs, but really, these guys irritate the hell out of me. After the Globe story, these beardy-weirdies have been popping up all over the place. There's nothing the media loves more than two freaks with a social conscience.

Since my blood pressure hasn’t hit 160/120 in a while, let’s visit their little corner of vegantown and see how we do.

From the Globe article:

The couple's commitment is all-encompassing. In their cozy apartment near St. Clair and Oakwood, newly washed plastic bags attached to a fan in the kitchen dry in the wind. She figures she'll start making her own rice milk and almond milk again, since the refillable milk bottles they order from a health-food store are sealed with disposable plastic tops.

and

The couple recycles as a last resort to avoid sending trash to the landfill -- but they're most committed to reducing waste, and the obstacles can be surprising. "Our biggest problems are the smallest things, like stickers on fruit," says Ms. McGaughey, who saves those stickers to make collages and cards for friends.

Spending my evenings washing plastic bags? Home-made nut juice? Fruit-sticker birthday cards? Where do I sign?

And from their blog:


Also, we reuse our bath water to flush the toilet with. Our system is kind of complicated, but that’s because I’m a bit of a clean freak. The basic idea, which Kyle got from his German boss, is to save the bath water then use a big bucket to scoop in into the bowl of the toilet.

Here’s my system:

1.Get a large Tupperware container ( large enough to sit in, scrunched up) and keep it in the bathroom. Also get a big bucket (about mop sized) and a smaller one (yogurt container) to scoop the water with.

2. Put the plug in when you are having a shower

3. When you finish use the big bucket to scoop the water into the Tupperware

4. After using the toilet, use the big bucket to “water bomb” the bowl of the toilet and everything will flush down.

5. Put a small bucket full of water in the toilet so that there is water sitting for the next time.

6. Use a towel to wipe up the water you have inevitably spilt on the floor

Fucking hell. Toilet water has nothing to do with garbage. If I had set myself a zero-garbage challenge, you can bet your ass I’d be flushing with merry abandon because I’d feel totally frigging justified in disposing of something -- anything, even a turd -- without agonizing about it six ways from Sunday. Running water may be the last vestige of civilization in their crunchy kingdom and frankly, if I were living with them, I'd be taking scalding hot baths every night. Perhaps to better contemplate slitting my wrists.

Now, I am not an SUV-driving lardass greedhead (I drive a Matrix). We compost. We use our green bin. We use energy-saving lightbulbs. We have spent a minor fortune making our house more energy efficient. We have complicated arrangements involving rain barrels that I'm at a loss to even describe.

But even so, I absolutely concede that Sarah and Kyle, bless 'em, are doing way more to suck up to ol’ Mother Earth than I will ever do.

However, I would argue that they are doing far more damage overall to the environmental movement.

Why? Because people are lazy sods, and when they read about fruit-sticker greeting cards and having to set up a fan in their kitchen, they’re going to think “fuck me, that sounds hard. I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that.”


Sarah and Kyle are the right-on, Greeny equivalent of those mouth-breathing Christian sects you sometimes read about -- the kind who don't believe in birth control or money or TV, but who do believe in lots of prayer and goats. In fact, if they lived 150 years ago, they'd probably belong to some obscure sect that wore burlap undershirts and distributed tracts about their salutary effects for preventing masturbation. It's the same mentality.

And now I am going to do penance for writing this by eating a date and drinking a pint of nut juice.