The Environmental Atheist

I sometimes amble down to Canada Place to get away from the office at lunch time. Today a maintenance worker parked a big green box close by. The fact that it had solar panels on the top piqued my curiosity. At first I thought it was some sort of information kiosk, but the revelation of the symbol for a refuse container made it that much more intriguing. Why would a trash receptacle need solar panels? Was it lighted to help people find it after dark? Did it have some sort of interactive capability, like an led screen displaying information about recycling and the future of biomass energy? Did it merely speak to users in reassuring tones, thanking them for not littering? Walking to the front, the purpose of the panels was made clear. It was a solar-powered trash compactor.

The average Joe will look at something with solar panels and instantly and mistakenly make the connection with sustainability. The same goes for things painted green. This mnemonic abbreviation a strange psychological defect. We abstract our world at every turn, putting it into simplest terms, eliminating complexity, and taking the tidbits of information we're fed for granted. It's instinctual, and a vital skill that becomes more necessary as the complexity of our world increases. An indirect result is that PR - which takes advantage of these sorts of memory loopholes - is a thriving and lucrative business.

What has the city (who I believe is responsible for the upkeep of Canada Place) accomplished by installing these compactors? In the short term, it may have solved the logistical problem of dealing with the increasing amount of garbage created by residents and tourists. A box that can automatically compact its contents needs to be emptied less frequently, a bonus for days when special events bring throngs of people and the trash they create to the convention centre. So, they may have to hire one less person to empty these bins and the power to run them is free of charge thanks to Mr. Sun. But lest people think that this is an example of how technology can help us with our environmental woes, we should look a little deeper.

Compacting trash only reduces the space it takes up in the compactor and possibly the containers used to transport the waste to the landfill. In the landfill, the waste will take up no less space than it did before it was compacted, because all trash eventually gets the same level of compression once tonnes of other trash is piled on top. There may be a slight benefit in that fewer bin liners are used to contain the trash between the compactor and the dump, but given the small number of compactors compared to other trash containers, the effect is insignificant.

In essence, the solar trash compactor is just another example of how we use technology to deal with the effect of a problem and not the source - the problem being the increase of trash in our cities. Instead of using bylaws and education to get businesses to eliminate, cut down on or improve the quality of the waste they generate through packaging, the city allows them continue flooding the streets with single-use plastic and paper products. Much of the time, this packaging is not recyclable or biodegradable. So our landfills fill up for the sake of convenience and economy. Imagine if you had a leaky faucet outside of your house that incessantly flooded your yard and instead of buying a washer and fixing the leak, you invested in a solar powered sump pump to remove the water. The effect would be dealt with (with free power from Mr. Sun) but the cause would remain.

Technology may be the only way to deal with some problems - problems, incidentally, created by technology in many cases - but it shouldn't be viewed as a panacea. In all cases, one should look for the source of the problem and eliminate it if the benefits don't outweigh the costs. Also, those costs need to be measured fully, looking at all affected entities far into the future. Everything is connected: a simple, disposable plastic lid is derived from petroleum, the acquisition of which fuels wars and rapes the landscape, and when used as fuel, robs our biosphere of the thermal/meteorological balance needed to sustain life; a paper cup was once part of a carbon-dioxide-eating forest, felled, destroying habitats, in turn decreasing biodiversity which helps species survive disease and natural disasters, species which we may depend on in the future for food and oxygen after our own monolithic, domesticated species have been wiped out from haphazard, virulent genetic modification.