Whatever happened to the big 50?

In case no one has noticed, the year is 2000. By now we were supposed to have reduced waste by 50 %.
Are we even close? No.
Indeed, my spies tell me that at a recent "consultation" on the new Waste Diversion Organization's long-term funding principles, the magic 50 was described as "an aspirational goal" and then as "a directional target". Well, I'm glad we got that clarified.
The trouble is that waste management is off the radar screen for the Province of Ontario, and unless we get another few more Plastimet and Hagersville fires it will probably stay there.
The entire environment portfolio has been gradually demoted since 1995.
We began with a greenhorn. She was quickly pushed aside for a seasoned but uninspiring war horse.
He eventually gave way for someone who may actually have had some promise. But then he was moved to a more important portfolio when its minister was hung out to dry after falling foul of conflict guidelines. The new kid on the block, having attributed Ontario pollution to acts of nature (as opposed to deregulation and a lack of enforcement of the regulations that have survived) has been busy putting our fires in Walkerton and will likely be doing so for some time.
What chance de we have for meaningful discussion on waste management when the environment ministry itself cannot find a real voice at the cabinet table? Probably about the same chance we have of reaching the (federal government-sponsored) greenhouse gas reduction targets we promised at Kyoto.
It is a curious thing that everyone was concerned about the environment when the economy was in the tank and those reductions in waste and emissions seemed do-able. Now they are only illusions. Or are they?
If some individual communities can reduce their waste by 50 per cent, why can't the province as a whole?
One of these years we will appreciate the amount of waste

that is organic, and that to tackle that fraction would push us past the halfway mark very quickly.
At the same time we may appreciate that other than recognized hazardous wastes, it's the organic stream that causes much of the grief in landfills, not the inert glass and plastic we seem so keen to divert -- at any cost, it seems.
One of the first acts of the current government was to cut the subsidy on backyard composters. As the single most effective (and cheapest) household waste reduction tool on the planet, you have to wonder about that move.
Slowly, but surely, the user pay concept is working its way into our waste management culture, as more and more (and larger) municipalities bring in some sort of use-based structure for their programs. It's coming, and it is having a dramatic effect on the composting and recycling rates in those communities.
The composting is good, but we won't be much further ahead, financially, if all people are doing is placing their obscure plastics into the blue box rather than the garbage bag. Unless there is some real product stewardship shown by industry, and soon, merely shifting these materials from the garbage stream to the blue box stream will actually cost the taxpayer more, not less, and the environmental benefit of "recycling" single-serve lunch containers into plastic wood is highly questionable.
Let's stop wasting our time on this packaging. Send it to the landfill and make no bones about it. The environmental impact would be negligible and those companies who make these convenience items will not be able to hide behind the mobius loop in their marketing.
In the meantime, let's beef up the composting, beef up the grasscycling, stop picking up lawn clippings and ban organics from the landfill.

We may  reach the big 50, one day. But, if the Province were serious about reducing waste, it would be a heck of a lot sooner.

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