ABSTRACT
Globally waste is a growing social problem. As our rates of consumption increase and populations urbanize, the need to handle and safely discard unwanted, spoiled and hazardous materials is not just a personal trouble but also a public safety issue. Hoornweg, Bhada-Tata, and Kennedy (2013: 616) report that at the beginning of this century, the world’s urban population was creating more than three million tonnes of solid waste per day. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (2011: 1) informs us that in 2010 Americans generated on average 4.43 pounds of waste per person, per day. The story is no different in Canada where in 2010, over the course of a year, 25 million tons of non-hazardous waste was trucked to landfills (Statistics Canada, 2013: 7). This capacity to jettison a significant amount of resources, goods, and materials from our homes on a daily, weekly, and annual basis is a direct result of increasing consumption patterns.
