Halifax Setup for a Plague
Posted on 30 August 2010 | No responses
Whenever I go to another place, I suffer a little culture shock. When we first arrived in Nova Scotia, the culture shock arose with their “Green Carts“.Green Carts are part of Halifax’s (and Nova Scotia’s in general) effort to reduce waste being placed in their land fills. Waste is to be separated into four groups: paper, other recyclables, organics, and true waste. What shocked Sharon and I was the organics. The first organics bin (Green Cart) we came across was near a convenience store in a small town. As we left the store with our slice of pizza and looking about for a place to sit and eat it, all we were left with was a spot next to a stinky bucket of rotting waste. When we arrived in Halifax, we were informed that our apartment building had a Green Cart, and that we are legal obligated to use it. Every day, Sharon or I takes our organic waste out to the communal Green Cart for our apartment. It is always overflowing with wet, smelly, garbage, with flies swarming about it. Inevitably, when the lid is lifted, there is something sticky on the handle (I don’t even want to think about what is on my hands at that point). All in all, I dislike the things.
I mentioned my culture shock to one of my co-workers the other day. I explained that I was having a really hard time with the Green Carts, every time I see them I cringe. The smell coming from them, the flies, and the really filthy appearance of their outsides, all make me really uncomfortable. She pounced: compost is safe, lots of people compost, and its good for gardens. I was forced to back down really quickly, my intent was not to attack Halifax’s policy of having Green Carts, but only to express (and laugh at) my discomfort with them.
I took the bus home, with this little nugget bothering me. It bothered me that I was bothered by Green Carts. I was left feeling guilty for questioning the ecologically friendly practice of composting household waste. When I mentioned this conversation to Sharon, she pointed out that she dislikes the Green Carts too. She pointed out that while we never had a problem composting at home, the practice of loading these bins has a lot of problems. That’s when it clicked for me: my co-worker was defending composting, I am alright with composting, I like composting, I do compost; my problem is the the Green Carts themselves, and the two things are totally unrelated. I shouldn’t feel guilty for attacking composting (I wasn’t), I should feel guilty for not attacking the Green Carts vehemently enough.
Pointless
When we were leaving Calgary, we found ourselves making a lot of trips to the garbage dump. There were a lot of items we needed to get rid of that were either left from previous owners, we could not find a good home for, or we had used well past its life-span.[1] Before our first run to the dump, we had to do a bit of research into what was acceptable to be thrown out, what needed special treatment, and what was just disallowed. Now the dump charges you a minimum of $12 for a load of garbage, unless you have the one free item: clean fill. Clean fill is plain old dirt and rocks and is a necessary component to the waste management, they need to cut the entire thing with a neutral substrate. If you are dropping off clean fill, you are saving the dump money; they no longer have to go out and get something to mix into their mix. Frankly, the more clean fill, the healthier the mix.
If we consider organic waste healthy material to be putting in our gardens, surely it can be counted as clean fill .By outlawing the disposal of organic waste in the regular garbage, the Halifax Regional Municipality has cut itself off from from a free and easy source of clean fill. Their waste will no longer be diluted, but instead will be toxic concentrate; the land (once buried) will no longer be fit for any use, and will truly be a “waste land”.
Disease
The responsibility of municipalities to ensure proper waste disposal was still in contention in France up to the mid-1800s. Many land owners did not want the expense of creating the infrastructure to deal with household waste. Regardless of the expense involved, municipal leaders, the world over, have recognized the need for effective disposal of waste in high density areas. This need has been recognized since the great plagues of Europe.
Waste material has several serious health concerns associated with it: toxicity, biologic contamination, and pest control. The toxic nature of the materials that make up items such as paint and light bulbs is readily recognized, and not part of any organic disposal.
Biological hazards, include diseases that can be spread from the fluids humans excrete. These can contain everything from the common cold to more dangerous conditions. This is why hospitals incinerate so much of their waste, it is considered to be the only safe way to destroy the material. For the most part, this is recognized as not something that is to be placed in compost[2], but I am confident that not everybody knows where to draw the line.
The most disconcerting part of the Green Carts is that they sit out in the sun, with no air circulation, acting as a breeding pool for disease, and a pest attractant. Halifax does have rats (only natural given that it has been a port city for hundreds of years), but controlling the rodent population should be an important consideration. It was years before it was determined what caused the Black Plague outbreaks, and more recently it was years before it was determined what caused the Hantavirus outbreaks, but in both cases it was determined to be rodents (rats and mice respectively). While controlling pest infestations is a continuous struggle for humans, the first step is always the same: control the food supply. Whether your pests are ants, mice, rats, coyotes, grizzly, or polar bears; the first step is to ensure there is no free food sitting around that would encourage them to move into the area.
Footnotes
- One item we got rid of was an office chair that we had fished out of a dumpster three years before. It was broken when we found it, but was serviceable, so we patched it and used it for years. When we threw it out, some young guy commented that it was nicer than the chair he had. I think he was trying to shame me for being so wasteful (while he threw out what appeared to be a nice desk, bed, and nightstand). I told him that this was where I got it from, this was where it was going… Ashes to ashes, Dump to dump.↩
- I am convinced that much of this material can be safely composted, but the dividing line is very dependant on the individuals involved and is certainly not feasible to determine on a municipal level. For example, it is likely safe for me to throw the 100% organic t-shirt I used to bandage my sliced up arm in the compost; however, an individual who is HIV positive should take greater care in disposing of such material. Somewhere between me (who recently had a battery of blood tests) and a known HIV positive individual is a grey area↩
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Shit Disturbers Reinvent the Wheel
Posted on 12 August 2010 | No responses
Automated testing of systems is my pet peeve: I think every computer system should have a series of tests that get run by another computer that test every problem ever thought of. My current employer has asked me to start developing a system just like this for their record keeping and delivery system.Currently my company has purchased a third-party tool for automating control of the software, unfortunately, the tool sucks. It is very difficult for non-programmers to understand its round about logic (it’s using screen scraper triggered events), and has no mechanism for managing large numbers of scripts (each one is managed in and of itself). When building testing systems, the tests themselves tend to be easy to create, managing and tracking large numbers of tests becomes the problem. Being a diligent employee (alright, a diligent problem solver), I suggested it was possible to build our own tool that was better able to be understood by non-programmers, and would allow us to easier manage large numbers of tests.
Reinventing the Wheel
That’s when I heard it: “There’s no point reinventing the wheel”.
I take exception this, I am encouraged to solve problems in the office and invention is the key to doing this. I recognize that all problems have been solved; we already have wheels. The only problem that ever exists is the need to refine the general solution to the particular instance of the problem.
To get back to the analogy, if we had never reinvented the wheel we would still be driving around on Wagon Wheels. I myself like having soft rubber tires on my car.
Reinventions of the Wheel:
In the end, we reinvent the wheel on a regular basis, not every wheel is perfect for every vehicle. Similarily, when solving problems at work while designing systems, it is sometimes necessary to build a custom component that suites the needs of the problem. While not a total reinvention, they are a design better suited to the problem at hand. To work around the foibles of the existing technology, just because it already exists, is the kind of short sightedness that leads to problems being ignored.
Shit Disturber
Naturally, the moment I suggest all of this, I am accused of being a Shit Disturber. When someone accuses me of being a Shit Disturber, I know I’m on the right track. Let’s break that term down; “shit” and “disturber”; or a disturber of shit. In order for this to be true, there must be “shit” to disturb. That I am being accused of being a Shit Disturber forces my audience to acknowledge that there is in fact shit present. If there is shit present that has been ignored and avoided; it may be more important to ask questions like, “when does somebody intend to do something about the shit, rather than ignore it”? This is usually the hardest part of convincing people to change: getting them to acknowledge that there is a problem which requires fixing.
Being a “Disturber of Shit” is not a bad thing. Just because you are disturbing the shit, does not mean you put it there. If the shit is in the middle of the road, we can either ignore the shit or do something about it. Naturally, this causes some discomfort: people have got used to their path around the shit; while it is being moved, the shit tends to stink; people have a hard enough time cleaning their own shit; and the person that put the shit there probably feels like shit for not cleaning it up in the first place. The Disturber is just the person willing to do something about the problem. The fact of the matter is, we can ignore problems for a long time, or put up with the temporary discomfort of fixing them.
Conclusion
Shit stinks and The Wheel turns; these are two truths of the world. Ignoring them does not make them go away. In life we need to identify problems (shit), find solutions (reinvent the wheel), and make the changes to enact those solutions (disturb the shit). In the past, I have been both punished and praised for taking drastic action to solve drastic problems (often regarding the same problem and by the same person). While we may find change uncomfortable, we should never turn away from those solutions.
So a tip of the hat to all those Shit Disturbers out there; may you always keep finding ways to reinvent the wheel.
Link Summary
Hedge Laying
Posted on 24 July 2010 | 2 responses
I have always thought hedges are dumb. They serve little purpose, look like crap because people don’t take care of them, and get trashed when kids cut through them. Apparently that’s only because I live in North America.About two years ago I read a book, by an Englishman, about self-sufficiency. In this book he made a very brief reference to hedge maintenance, and I saw something that made me take notice: he was cutting through the branches and pushing them over. By doing this he was placing the branches close together, so that as they continued to grow, they would interweave themselves, making an impenetrable wall. I had a vision, of gooseberry bushes, along the top of the retaining wall. I could just see the local kids trying to hop the thorny hedge… exactly once. After their friends got a good look at how messed up they are, I wouldn’t have to worry about kids jumping my fence.
I never have been able to find the reference since.
For two years, I have been trying to find instructions on how to undertake this process. The idea of creating an impenetrable fence, made from living and fruit bearing material, fascinates me. That the fence actually regenerates over time is part of that philosophy of being a caretaker of nature, that I so like. The fence is a living part of the property, it acts as a barrier (as all fences do), but is part of the living part of your land.
Apparently the process is called Hedge Laying.
Apparently, this is very common in the UK, but not so much in North America[1]. I’m not even sure that anyone remembers that this was ever done in North America. Some of the properties we have looked at have the appearance of once having a hedge, but the hedges have just been allowed to grow wild. It makes sense that the original English settlers in Nova Scotia (1600′s) would have planted hedges, at the time they were an integral part of live stock management (in the past, you would plant your fence, not build it). Having said that, I have never seen a layed hedge, and I don’t think there is even the knowledge that such a thing could be done here.[2]
When I get to our new property, I think I will try my hand at laying. Optimally, I would take a class, but since this is lost knowledge on this side of the world, and I’m not going all the way to England just for that, I will have to try to learn the hard way. Maybe I can talk one of the experts in the UK into helping me by critiquing my work from picture and video. Hmmm…
I’ll start with some land that needs clearing, and try cutting some of the smaller trees in the appropriate way for Laying. It doesn’t matter if I mess up, I am just going to pull the tree anyway. As I get better, I will start walking the perimeter of the property and begin laying sections of the scrub that is currently there. Over time, I hope to be able to show a well-layed, goat-proof[3], hedge.
Well… I have my book, my axe, and my saw… now I just need the property.
A hedge before laying
Hedge After being "Layed"
The pictures were “borrowed”, without permission, from
Karl Liebscher
http://www.shropshirehedgelaying.co.uk/
a professional Hedge Layer.
Footnotes
- it almost became a lost skill in England after the 1950′s, but it is being practised there again↩
- It’s driving me nuts, looking at a 150 year old house, with a bunch of wild scrub around its perimeter, but all of the “wild scrub” is in a perfectly straight line and of the same species. It’s obvious that 150 years ago, someone planted a line of trees with the intent of them being a fence, but over the years people have stopped laying the hedge, so it just goes feral.↩
- Yes, goat proof. I’ve seen sheep proof, and bull proof, styles, but I haven’t seen a style that is specialised for goats. Should be interesting.↩
