RECYCLING BY THE SEA
(Reprinted from Canadian Geographic, 2001)
by Silver Donald Cameron
You would expect David Wimberly to be jubilant -- like other Nova Scotians -- but maybe that's not in his nature.
Nova Scotia has suddenly become famous for its environmental achievements. A decade ago, Canada’s provinces set a goal of “50% by 2000” -- eliminating, by the year 2000, half the amount of solid waste sent to the nation’s dumps and incinerators. Nova Scotia has done it. No other province has even come close. As we speak, the story is being carried by CNN. Officials from Hong Kong, Ireland and Russia are making pilgrimages to Halifax to see how we do it.
David Wimberly worked hard to bring this about. Bearded, hospitable, obsessive, and voluble,he is a perfectionist, as befits his trade. He is Canada’s only master flute-maker, and in the modest workshop attached to his home he builds elegant, precise instruments in sterling silver and 14K gold.
For eight years, Wimberly was immersed, so to speak, in garbage. On behalf of the It’s Not Garbage Coalition, he prepared documents, did research, formulated strategies, attended endless meetings, issued press statements. With a colleague, he produced 30 one-hour programs on solid waste for community TV. Depending on who you talk to, he is a practical visionary, a headline-grabbing ecological extremist, an exemplary citizen, or a prime pain in the pantaloons.
“Well, no, I’m not entirely in favour of what we ended up with,” he says, sitting in his sunny living room overlooking St. Margaret’s Bay, just south of Halifax. “There was to be no organic material in the landfill, but the private contractor that runs it got permission to leave stabilized organics there." Stabilized organics consist of compostable material which is only partly composted.
"Also there isn’t enough funding for education and home composting. And the whole system is too mechanized, too technological, too expensive, and it requires too much transportation of wastes.”
But the efforts of people like him have placed Nova Scotia in the vanguard of recycling, right?
“Well, yes,” Wimberly concedes, almost reluctantly. “We do lead the world, certainly the Americas. Our only competition would be a few places in Europe.”
So why this tone of disappointment?
“Well,” says Wimberly, “it could have been so much better.”
