California dreamin’

Now it’s California that calls: Tomorrow I’m headed to the Bay area for a family visit. While there of course, I’ll get an insider’s view on how their garbage system works and come back with a full report.

In the meantime, Floyd and I went for a very long walk in Sheppard’s Bush.

All that I picked up was a Country Style cup with “Beautiful” written on the side. Sorry Country Style marketers, but the discarded cup does not look beautiful on our sidewalk, nor does what was inside:

Two bags from Country Style, seven parking stubs from Cadillac Fairview Express Park, an empty plastic Dentyne mint container (there’s really no end to this. Is that recyclable?), a blank piece of paper and two napkins.

Ho hum

Things are settling into a pattern here: It’s eat, drink and be merry and throw the containers away.

Here’s the count:

• 5 Tim Hortons cup + 1 lid
• 1 Second Cup cup
• 1 Country Style cup with “passion” on the side. (Well, it is Valentine’s Day)
• 1 Popeye’s Thirst Quencher cup (that’s new to me)
• 1 Coke can
• 1 Brisk can (boy was it ever today)
• 1 Oasis juice TetraPak
• 1  chocolate milk carton
• 1 regular milk carton
• 1 beer bottle

The bucks are adding up on what I’m going to make on beer bottles.

The LCBO is protecting its bottles now with plastic, green, net sleeves instead of the old paper bags. Apparently they’re made from recycled stuff, but I don’t know if it’s recyclable itself.

Judging from what I know about York Region’s one-stream system, it won’t be. Already things such as plastic wrap, grocery bags and shredded paper are not accepted because they’d get bound in the system.

I’ll find out.

Marching briskly

Floyd and I braved the cold today and found a few treasures: 1 Tim Hortons cup, a cigarette pack, a cigar wrapper and a Mars bar wrapper.

As well, there was a TV and dresser on the curb on Batson. I belong to a spinoff of Freecycle, Aurora Newmarket Pass It On, and I posted the items there. It’s http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AuroraNewmarketPassItOn/.

I never know if they are rescued before garbage day, but at least I’ve tried.

Happy ending

The town is going to pick up the garbage next to the Welcome-to-Aurora sign.

And, I forgot to mention yesterday that I found a little dish I’m going to wash up and use for sauces.

I put yesterday’s iced capp into the sink to melt overnight Most of it did and flowed down the drain, but there’s a white fluffy part to it that has just stayed the same, didn’t even liquify. Not sure what it is, but it can’t be good for you.

As for my trash haul, all I managed on a short jaunt to the library and back was a 2-litre Pepsi bottle, a Tim Hortons coffee cup with lid, a Country Style coffee cup with “Passion” written on the side. (Getting ready for Valentine’s Day?), a non-working lighter and a strange rubber and metal device that I can’t begin to imagine where it came from.

Hey, I’m not complaining.

No one’s come through with numbers on how much energy disposable coffee cups take, or how many trees, but I think we can safely assume lots.

First crews need to travel in to the forestry site, use heavy machines to cut down and trim the trees. Then the trees need to be hauled to the mill and made into paper cups.

The cups travel to the 2,700 Tim Hortons outlets across the country, to be used for five minutes and then discarded.

Pretty high cost for convenience I’d say.

I think my concern for all this comes from the fact that I grew up in the country. I spent a lot of time in trees, climbing them, sitting there and eating their fruit.

And, I learned to enjoy my surroundings and be uplifted by their beauty. I still expect my surroundings to uplift, but unfortunately for many reasons, that’s no longer the case.

Whew, what a sermon.

When will they ever learn

What can I say that hasn’t been said before. Today, the photos of our downtown will do the job for me. You might need to look carefully, but most show trash.

On the good news front, Floyd found a tennis ball he happily carried home. And, I’m finding enough plastic water bottles with water in them to keep Floyd well hydrated.

And best news of all, disposable coffee cup lids (number 6 inside the recycling symbol) are recyclable, because they’re rigid plastic.

Expanded number 6 materials such as cookie trays are not recyclable.

Here’s my list taken from a walk up Yonge to St. Andrews Village and back down to Yonge and Wellington:

• 1 plastic bag which formerly contained a Gummi Lunch, specifically gummi french fries. I’m not kidding.
• 1 plastic water bottle with water
• 1 Tim Hortons iced capp cup, lid, straw and iced capp. Won’t be trying that any time soon.
• 2 double cupped Tim Hortons coffee cups + lid
• 1 single Tim Hortons coffee cup + lid
• 1 Second Cup coffee cup + lid
• 1 Java Stop coffee cup
• 1 Country Style coffee cup
• 1 Starbucks coffee cup + lid
• 2 cigarette packs. Amazing how tidy untidy people can be. One of these packs was tucked neatly inside a coffee cup
• 1 KFC soft drink cup
• 1 Wendy’s soft drink cup
• 3 of the above from Quizno’s + lid and straw
• 1 bag from Quizno’s
• 1 plastic Coke bottle with straw inside. More neatness
• 2 Coke cans
• 3 Sprite cans
• 1 display box for cigars
• 1 3.78 l jug formerly containing windshield anti-freeze

A good workout. My litter-busting colleague from Quebec considers it a privilege to pick up trash because it denotes his physical ability to do so.

I’m not gracious, just grumpy.

Will the last person out please turn off the Christmas lights

To the eleven households on my walk up Spruce, across Batson and down Walton: Sorry you didn’t like your Christmas gifts, but Santa doesn’t make exchanges.

Please join us in wallowing in the sticky sweetness of Valentine’s Day and the maudlin gloom of the February blahs.

Recycling web

No easily accessible data on how much energy and how many trees go into making the multitude of Tim Hortons’ cups we toss away every day. I’m still on it.

On the matter of their recyclability, I’ve called Tim Hortons customer service, the Recycling Council of Ontario and emailed the Region of York, trying to untangle the web of confusion.

Tim Hortons says they’re not recyclable because of the mineral oils and dyes used in the cups, the Region of York says they are, because, as the Recycling Council says, some systems manage to recycle them. So, here, we’re lucky. We can recycle them. The lids must go into the garbage.

On the matter of in-store recycling, Tim Hortons seems to have an inconsistent system between stores. Some have blue containers welcoming plastic and glass bottles and cans. And, they may have recycling containers for their own coffee cups. Others do not. I need to find out why.

But to bypass all this, customers can bring in their own mugs for filling and save 10 cents on each cup of coffee.

As for my idling rant of yesterday. I called a bylaw officer in Newmarket (Aurora doesn’t have an anti-idling bylaw). He said technically and legally, those cars creeping through the drive-through are not idling because they are not stationary. They can blissfully and legally, take five minutes to cover 100 metres (and I’m sure the effects on the air are the same as if they were stationary), no problem.

So, in order to clean up the air, it’s up to us to make the effort to park the car and walk inside. It just might be faster too.

On another walk, I picked up more stuff:

• 2 TimHortons coffee cups
• 1 McDonald’s coffee cup + lid
• 1 Mac’s coffee cup
• 1 slushie cup, lid and bright pink straw
• 1 plastic pop bottle
• 2 pop cans (Coke and Canada Dry if you must know)
• 1 Wendy’s soft drink cup
• 1 juice tetra-pak
• 1 flyer

Walking the dog

I have a helper with this project now, Floyd, a golden doodle. He tracks down energy bar wrappers and coffee cups, no problem and makes it kind of fun.

Here’s what Floyd and I found on our morning stroll:

• 1 box from a hair colouring product
• 1 political flyer
• 2 energy bar wrappers
• 1 slushie container
• 1 aluminum pie plate
• 1 coke can
• 1 root beer can
• 1 Java Stop cup and lid
• 2 Tim Hortons coffee cups + 1 lid
• 1 beer can

The beer can was outside an elementary school: teacher on a break? student on a break? former student with a grudge?

The pie plate puzzled me a bit: It lay in front of a house where a father was just setting out to walk his son to school. A touching scene, except that I know the plate’s been there a while, leading me to wonder why he bend over and pick it up.

I suspect a lot of this stuff blows from recycling boxes. And, the guys that pick it up are on a mission, hurling the blue box contents into the truck, leaving some on the ground and even in the box as they gun it down the street.

This leaves it to us to once again deal with our trash, and I guess at the beginning, or end, of long days, we’re just too tired to bother.

Idling in line

Well, the media are all over greenhouse gases and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Drive-throughs seems an obvious, preventable source of CO2. I think our culture confuses want and need. I mean, are we really so busy we don’t have time to cook properly, or even to get out of the car to fetch takeout?

Certainly, what I saw this morning at the Wellington Tim Hortons from 7:30 to 9 a.m. refutes the time argument.

My intention was to count vehicles until there was no lineup, but after an hour and a half it was as busy as ever with a lineup of at least six cars and I’d had enough.

During that time, I counted 162 drive-through vehicles (Only one was a hybrid.), roughly two per minute. Sounds good on paper, but in fact, because of the lineup, it worked out to a wait of roughly five minutes.

I clocked one van as taking seven minutes to crawl its way through.

That’s as long as it takes to make breakfast at my house, including coffee. Pack it up into a travel mug and sandwich container and you’re in just the same place as if you’d stood or idled in line at Tim’s, without the hassle.

And, then there’s money saved, and waste, carbon dioxide emissions and car wear-and-tear reduced.

So, I’ll leave it to those who depend on Tim’s for their early morning refreshment to explain why it’s worth it. If it’s to leave early to beat the traffic, drive-throughers should note that they are the traffic: Most of the 162 vehicles had only one occupant.

If they doubled up, there’d be half the traffic on the road and they’d get through the drive-through faster too.

Using the stat (source given below) that each vehicle idling for five minutes produces 276 grams of CO2, here’s my calculation of the amount of carbon dioxide Tim Hortons drive-throughs contribute daily.

There are 2,700 Tim’s in Canada, 300 in the U.S. Of that 3,000 total, 2,713 have drive-throughs. (I got this information from Tim Horton’s customer service.)

Taking my morning rush hour figure of 162 vehicles and assuming two more rush-”hours” every day, that make each Tim drive-through seeing 486 cars idling for five minutes (or more) daily.

Therefore, CO2 generated at one of those drive-throughs during peak periods is 134,136 grams, or 134.136 kilograms. Multiplied by the 2,713 drive-throughs, that means 363,910.96 kilograms daily of carbon dioxide emissions daily.

And, that’s only from one fast food drive-through.

I really hope I’ve over-estimated, but I did overhear one walk-in customer comment that it seemed slow today.

Other idling stats from

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/communities-government/transportation/municipal-communities/articles/faq.cfm?attr=8

a Natural Resources Canada website, updated last year.

• One vehicle idling for five minutes burns just over one-tenth of a litre‚ or over ten cents worth of gasoline (assuming fuel costs are $1 per litre). And it produces 276 grams of CO₂. This may not sound like a lot but remember‚ millions of motorists have fallen into the idling trap. In fact‚ if all drivers of light-duty vehicles in Canada avoided idling for just five minutes a day we would collectively save 1.8 million litres of fuel‚ worth more than $1.8 million every day! Just as important‚ over the period of a year‚ we would prevent more than 1.6 million tonnes of GHG’s from entering the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of taking 490‚000 cars off the road.
• Idling can damage a car’s enginge: Because the engine isn’t working at its peak operating temperature when it’s idling‚ the fuel doesn’t undergo complete combustion. This leaves fuel residues that can contaminate engine oil and damage engine parts. For example‚ fuel residues tend to deposit on spark plugs. As the amount of engine idling increases‚ the average temperature of the spark plugs drops. They begin to gather dirt more quickly which‚ in turn‚ may increase fuel consumption. It’s a vicious cycle of wasted fuel and needless greenhouse gas emissions. Excessive idling can also allow water to condense in the vehicle’s exhaust. This can lead to corrosion and reduce the life of the exhaust system.

• If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds (except in traffic)‚ you’ll save fuel and money by turning off the vehicle and then restarting it when you’re ready to drive again. Every 10 minutes of idling costs you at least one-fifth of a litre in wasted fuel – and up to two-fifths of a litre if your vehicle has an eight-cylinder engine. As well‚ restarting a car many times doesn’t have a significant impact on the battery and starter motor as is commonly believed. And catalytic converters stay warm for up to 25 minutes after you turn off the engine‚ so frequent stops and starts don’t produce the large amount of harmful emissions seen with cold starts.

• Every litre of fuel that is burned produces about 2.4 kg of CO₂.

And, yes, I walked there and back to Tim’s. Found 2 coffee cups and lids, 1 cigarette pack, 3 Wendy’s soft-drink cups, 1 Wendy’s french fry container and 2 pieces of newspaper.

Tomorrow, I tackle Tim’s waste.

Winter wonderland

Walked a lot today and pickings were slim. Still, I managed to pick up the remnants of what must have been dinner and a movie: a pizza box, a Tim Hortons doughnut box, a plastic water bottle, 2 Tim Hortons coffee cups and a beer bottle.

Some bash.

As I walked through the arboretum, I noticed that some of the saplings have been protected by signs, turned inside out and folded into a triangle. Re-using at work.

When I approached the soccer dome, a man was unpacking his golf clubs from his SUV, ready to work on his strokes. I wondered about the greenhouse gases produced to keep the dome inflated and warm and if we really need to have such a facility. We want nothing short of everything in this country: to play summer sports in the winter and winter sports in the summer.

Just as we’re now being encouraged to eat food produced locally, according to season, maybe we should go back a few decades and play sports according to season as well. Despite its availability, I just don’t think the dome is going to produce aTiger Woods any time soon, so let’s live with reality.

Tomorrow, I’m tackling Tim Hortons and its drive-thru. Some here want an anti-idling bylaw, but I wonder if it will extend to drive-thrus.