Pool filters, which are normally sent to landfill, become an indestructible animal enrichment device for a captive primate study. We have a few.
Last year, I searched for one or two refugee women to help fabricate one of my products and in the process, helped them settle into Canada and earn an income. This initiative turned into a social enterprise of eight women. We are currently applying for our articles of incorporation for a working co-operative. The Begin Again Group represents new beginnings for the women and the material. I have a rubber bag sample here you can take a look at later.
Bon Eco Design is expanding to include other restored historic buildings in Tamworth into a complex of spaces for collaborative design work and accommodation for others interested in joining our pursuit of discovering creative solutions for our waste problem. In 2012, I was encouraged to join a local concerned citizens committee to help increase the resistance against a proposed mega landfill. The site was located next to a closed, yet leaking, landfill in Greater Napanee near the 401, which is upstream from the Mohawk territory. The relentless researching by the committee exposed inadequate monitoring of the closed site and negligence by the waste company to determine the extent and the threat of the contamination. On top of this, I discovered the practice of collecting and depositing of landfill fluid, called leachate, through municipal water filtration plants. Thousands of chemicals and heavy metals make their way into our waterways and onto our fields as septic sludge fertilizer.
Being a witness to the garbage industry enlightened me to the extremely lucrative business and questionable practices of landfilling. Waste disposal is essentially a trucking operation. I have been privileged to the tactics of waste hauling companies to bribe, wait out and wear down small communities, but communities are fighting back. These companies are finding themselves up against intelligent and tenacious citizens, proving that their practices contaminate air, land and water, thereby destroying their economy and living conditions for many centuries.
In summary, the decades following the Hagersville tire fire saw the introduction of provincial regulations. As a result, most tires are now collected with a payment incentive, recycled into landscaping products, roads, flooring or sold abroad. I've been a witness to this cleanup effort since 2005. I don't believe our tire disposal issues are solved completely, but progress has been made.
Since 2005, I have visited local manufacturers in the region looking for waste materials, hoping to intercept them before going to landfill. To my relief, I found some examples of corporate stewardship with incentives in place to achieve zero waste, in order to be awarded with a high industry standard. However, there are many small, medium and large enterprises filling dumpsters of valuable waste and locking them up. I received some landfill insider information of a shipment of brand new children's snowsuits that didn't sell that season and another attempt to deposit several train cars' worth of boxes of cereal with too many raisins, which was a production error.
Landfilling and burning are unsustainable solutions to our waste. Both are loaded with carbon emissions. Starting with the extraction of non-renewable—