One Cubic Metre of Waste Each - Get Over It!

As I may have mentioned, I feel that few will mourn the end of the silly rubbish free year stunt from a couple of Christchurch environmentalists. Their web site is here.

They state:

764kg of rubbish is generated by every person living in Christchurch each year. More than 50% of this could have been recycled or composted. (Imagine if you actually had to contain your own rubbish!)

I state, so what? After the compacting that they do before trucking to Kate Valley, this represents less than a single cubic meter of material. It is a remarkably small amount. This includes all the packaging, all the food waste, all the plastic bags, all the plastic water guns, all the other junk we don't need.

It is truly astonishing that we should be bothered by this. With malaria still about, with a dodgy dictator striving for the world inflation record, with my local coffee shop charging $3.80 for a coffee, it is absolutely clear that there are much bigger priorities for the human race than the tiny amount of waste that each person generates.

But that is, and has always been the problem with environmentalists. That is what the 'ists' on the end means. If they were bookists then no doubt we would be subjected to campaigns to get people to cover their books to prevent damage. Bookists would demand that we don't allow children to read books for fear of damage. Bookists would offer courses in providing good storage facilities for books. Bookists would campaign for harsh penalties for anyone who damaged a book, even in their own home, even by accident.

Environmentalists don't care about humans. They only care about the environment. Not even the human environment, for that would include our houses, cars, jobs and the general quality of life we experience. No, environmentalists actually only care about the natural environment, to the exclusion of all else, and in particular, to the exclusion of human life. After all, as my 7 year old daughter told me recently (well trained in environmentalism of course from her 2 years at school), humans are the most dangerous animal on the planet.* 

And another thing: what is this obsession with removing anything which might actually rot from the landfill? I thought the idea was that landfills rot? If we turn all our food waste into soil then what is going to be left in the landfill? Why is it so important that nothing be allowed to rot in a landfill? I can't wait to find out.

So good riddance to these silly environmentalists who haven't for one minute thought about the stupidity of their cause, and the selfishness of focusing on this rather than something that actually matters to human life.

My message might sound harsh, but I mean it deeply: Get a life.

* When I asked whether she would be more afraid of a man-eating tiger or her grandmother, I was unable to get more than just smile in response. I haven't told her grandmother yet.