Waste. It`s like stupidity. It`s everywhere. North Americans have the most wasteful society ever seen on the planet. Waste is so prevalent, it is useless to try and document every example. Nonetheless, there are certain types of waste that bug me worse than others for no apparent reason. They are like personal pet peeves. We all have them and when it comes to waste, these are mine.
Take, for example, band-aids. You buy a pack of assorted sizes to cover every contingency; contusions abrasions, flaming boils on your inner leg just where your thighs meet when you walk. (What? Your thighs don`t meet when you walk???) More often than not, all you ever use are the standard size for the average oozing pimple, leaking hangnail or what have you. The itty-bitty ones are next to useless; suitable only for things like, say a dart puncture wound or infected follicle of some sort. By the time you`re done with the reasonable sized ones, you still have a full complement of the size appropriate for staunching blood flow on Barbie and Ken dolls.
It`s the same for the great big honkin` bandaids that accompany that same assorted pack. The way I see it, if you need to use a bandaid of this size, you better see a doctor... after the ambulance ride. You have bigger issues than a bandaid is able to cure, unless, of course, you don`t have health care insurance. By the time you are finished with the regulation sized ones, the only big ones you`ve used was to cut the strip of sticky stuff off to keep the ridiculously small bandaids on.
Gas is something else that is wasted constantly. I`m not talking about the wasted gas that is burned up in your average Tim Horton`s drive-through, although the amount frittered away waiting for a double-double is more staggering than six shots of tequila, but of that produced by our bovine buddies, the humble cow. According to online government documents available to anyone who wants to google it like I did, ol` Bossy can put out 250 to 500 litres of methane a day. (!) You know how many cows there are on the planet? Me neither and I`m too lazy to google it but you can imagine it is a HUGE resource being squandered! If we could harness that energy, we could ease the burden on conventional polluting methods of transportation, home heating and power generation needs. I would not, however, recommend it for your natural gas barbecue. Or maybe it`s just me that doesn`t want my burger cooked over cow fluffs.
One type of waste saddens me greatly. I see it in stores of every kind; masses of merchandise that will never move; like rigor mortis has set in. To call it dead stock is an understatement, at least for this season. I`m referring to all the Edmonton Oiler stuff you see; hats, toques, cards, stickers, lighters, and especially the flags. When`s the last time you saw an Oiler flag on a vehicle? All those resources used to manufacture all that stuff that`s just going to sit collecting more dust than a Swiffer abuser. It is not just a waste, it is a shame.
There’s one type of waste that is fairly insignificant in the big picture but drives me much crazier than it reasonably should. It’s that bit of sugar that’s left in the bag after I pour it into the sugar canister. No matter how much I shake the bag, I can still hear the individual grains of sugar rattling around inside, thumbing their crystallized noses at me. Years ago I saw on the TV show, Marketplace, where they had a spokesman from a sugar company who discussed this very issue. He demonstrated that, although it may sound like a lot of sugar trapped in the creases and folds of the bag, after dissecting the bag in a thorough package autopsy, the amount of all-natural sweetener freed was less than a teaspoon worth. My natural reaction was, of course. But it’s MY teaspoon worth, dagnabbit!!
Another waste; any amount spent on Brussels sprouts.
I notice Cupcake is very concerned about waste, particularly my wasting ways, not that I’m wasting away to nothing. She will hound me about running the water while I brush my teeth but takes an entire hotwater tankfull just to wash her hair, condition it, cream rinse it, even polish and wax it for all I know. Experiments limiting the hot water deliver at the tank while she is showering, however, have proven unwise. It does explain my limp.
Ultimately, I know that no matter how much I recycle and reuse, I will still waste stuff. From the last few dabs of shampoo at the bottom of the bottle that the squirty thing can’t suck up to the milk that isn’t drank quickly enough and ends up on the wrong side of the smoothy/chunky scale, waste will always be with us.
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let’s get wasted and have the time of our lives. - Anon
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