Green Bin Garbage

Toronto has started experiencing problems with their green bin program. I'm glad this is coming to light sooner rather than later, and I'm most pleased that the Toronto Star has been able to expose all these problems.

One of the problems they're having is that some of the compost being created from bin waste is proving "toxic to plants." I wrote of my concerns a while back on this very issue. I can't buy that it's a good idea to spray our food with decomposed carnivore feces and meat. If it's toxic to plants, what's it doing to us?


From The Big Necessity: "Additional scientific work is needed to reduce persistent uncertainty about the potential for adverse human health effects from exposure to biosolids." Some people who live near areas that are sprayed with sludge have been hospitalized for neurotoxicity, and experience seizures when the sludge is applied. And in 2000, biosolids that were judged "to pose a risk to healthy adult sewage workers, [were] judged risk-free even when applied to fields near young children, the elderly, and the immuno-compromised." Funny that.

When asked if biosolids are safe, one expert claimed, "I can't answer it's perfectly safe. I can't answer it's not safe." Here's the thing: if we don't KNOW that spraying agriculture with bio-solids is perfectly safe, then maybe we shouldn't be doing it.