I’ve been thinking about this idea recently (partially spurred by various articles and the idea that resources are becoming scarcer to) of looking to our landfill sites and determining how much of the junk and garbage in there is really just waiting for the right time and price before they become “mines” for us to use. Depending on whose information you look at and believe, we are fast approaching the point in time where the excess of the “developed” world will come to an end (or cost alot more than we are willing to accept); that said, there is a dual opportunity in mining the junk/garbage we have already accumulated in landfill sites:

1. recycling of valuable materials that would otherwise have to be extracted form regions far away (or near), refined, transported and manufactured into some useful item; by recycling the already here material, we provide work for many people, reduce the environmental impact required for new material goods as well.

2. reduce the waste we have thrown away, thereby helping us live less heavily upon the land and at the same time cleaning up after ourselves. Additionally, by doing this, we provide for re-use of the landfill space just cleaned of the now not-so-useless junk/garbage; thereby saving the requirement that more land be turned over to hold our garbage.

So, not only would it help reduce the size of the footprint that many of us leave upon the planet (I live in Canada, with a Carbon Footprint of 6.09 tonnes (for my wife and I) compared to the average Canadian with a Carbon Footprint of 11.2 tonnes based on what Zerofootprint Toronto calculated; it would allow for us to both feel better and leave a chance that we can catch this demon known as Global Warming before it gets too far from the stable door. What steps we’ve taken are not hard:

1. replace incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lights were possible (of the 32 light bulbs in the house, 22 were replaced in this way)
2. wash with cold water when doing laundry
3. keep showers to as short as possible
4. reduce the temperature of our house in the cooler/colder seasons by 1°C (about 2°F) to 20°C when home, 18°C when away
5. increase the temperature at which the ceiling fans go on in the summer by 1°C (about 2°F) to 27°C
6. added more insulation in the attic to boast the level to R50 from R30.
7. bought 3 200L rainbarrels for use around the yard, offsetting our use of mains water and providing an extra supply during drought if needed.

All this has helped reduce our impact; in one very measurable way, our use has dropped when looking at the electricity we use (our provider is BullFrogPower) where we currently use about 8.5Kwh/day sofar in 2008 (February through April), though our highest monthly average was back in 2006 at 16.2Kwh/day. Have we suffered, no, just learned to turn things off.

What’s next:

1. install a Solar Hotwater system; as our house has radiator heating as well, this could really offset our natural gas usage over the space of the year for heating and hotwater by (estimated ranges for Toronto) of between 55% and 85% of our annual gas bill. That would be very nice!!! (I figure it would take on the conservative end, about 7 years to recoup the cost (at current prices))

2. reduce or keep our electricity usage down to 8.5Kwh/day or lower and look at installing some PV panels to start off-setting what we get from the grid (thereby insulating us as the prices start to rise).

So, there’s a quick batch of things to think about and try and do in your life.

Cheers,

BlackMacX