Garbage reeducation program
Why recycle when the garbage is further away?
TESSA VANDERHART, STAFF
To the person or people who took the time to throw the issues of the Manitoban from the bottom floor of the Drake Centre in the garbage, though the recycling bin was closer:
Thank you. Not only have you made an excellent point — this paper is garbage — but you truly have affected change, and I applaud you for it.
At first grasp, it would appear that there are more constructive methods of taking action against the Manitoban: you could write a letter to me, the editor, perhaps, or you could politely ask how you can eliminate the $6/year levy that all students pay to operate the student paper.
But your method, friends, is significantly more prescient. That this editorial is addressed to you is the perfect evidence.
It’s the subtlety of the argument that I appreciate most: a political statement, veiling an environmental one. How simple! How beautiful!
What most university students fail to realize is that the garbage receptacle — or, more properly, the landfill — is the best place for a tree-based product such as the Manitoban.
Scientifically speaking, the breakdown of plastics, diapers, and other nasties in our untold numbers of landfills is slowed by the absence of organic material, which the Manitoban is, and which our good friends clearly realize. Without putting newspapers in the garbage, there’s nothing for our billions of tons of garbage but to sit and not decompose.
No, a smart cookie like you isn’t fazed by William Rathje’s Rubbish! An Archaeology of Garbage, which argues that anaerobic biodegradation of heavily processed newspaper in landfills could take as long as plastic degradation, and produce methane in the process.
And don’t even get me started on litter! I mean, really, litter is not about environmentalism; it is clearly a ploy to engender civic pride — a ruse far more dangerous than recycling.
The point is, when you see garbage, you throw it in the garbage.
Students at other universities know the score: Simon Fraser University, Kwantlen University College, Cape Breton University, and graduate students at the University of Victoria and Concordia are trying to dump the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) just as blatantly, if with a throwback to the democratic system.
The question I would put to those students, and to students at my own university, is this: do you want your place in the delicate university ecosystem to be represented by a humble recycling bin, or would you prefer to go for the gusto, make changes by whatever means necessary, live in the now, reaffirm who was, after all, the best Sesame Street character and give long-lost credulity to the garbage bin?
And, if action to achieve this noble end is indeed necessary, which is the appropriate means — territorial terrorism, at it were, or democratic disgust?
The Simon Fraser Students’ Society indubitably has been benefiting from the “take out the trash” ethos: former students’ newspaperman and current students’ union president Derrick Harder rode the wave of CFS criticism to the top of the heap, and stoops to claim $400,000 in membership fees for his organization.
What does this all mean? It doesn’t fucking matter whether you vandalize the Manitoban, vote in corrupt student politicians to vote out other, more corrupt student politicians, or bother with that recycling nonsense. It all ends up in the same place.
To that end, I can’t help but advocate guerilla tactics, both in the self-contained university environment and the larger, unfortunately also self-contained world. I never thought I’d applaud students for throwing out the Manitoban — much as I’m shocked at my own disdain for CFS-ditchers — but desperate times call for terroristic measures, and a bit of goddamned care and consideration to preserve our current state of existence.
Just try reading the newspaper before you throw it out!
