Big Brother is now watching your garbage too

The rules for materials allowed for recycling are set by RecycleBC, formerly known as Multi-Material BC. Our province is unique in that, since 2011, businesses that supply packaging and printed paper in the province assume the responsibility for the cost of collecting, sorting and recycling these materials.

So who are these people? Three of the four board members are from industry giants Unilever, Overwaitea and Loblaw. What you and I would think of as members are referred to as “stewards,” as if they are contributing in some way in reducing waste.

It is difficult to figure out who should and should not belong. For instance, both the Bank of Montreal and Bank of Nova Scotia are stewards, but neither TD nor RBC are. One would expect the major newspapers to be on the list, but they are not.

The District of Summerland is mandating the use of automated garbage carts partly because RecycleBC is not allowing blue bags in the recycling stream. The elephant in the room is that plastic shopping bags are not recyclable.

Do you not find it odd that the major source of plastic bags is from the companies so well-represented by RecycleBC? Could they not better meet their mandate of less waste by eliminating plastic bags at the source?

About 20 per cent of Canadian plastic recycling was going to China. It is said that Chinese President Xi Jinping saw the documentary film “Plastic China”. One particularly horrifying sequence in the film depicted children inhaling the fumes of burning plastic waste to determine how to sort. Mr. Xi rightly has restricted imports of scrap plastic into his country.

“Plastic China’ is no longer viewable in China. Unfortunately, the developed world’s scrap (read yours and mine, probably) is now diverted to other countries such as Vietnam. We need to do better.

We are now trying to understand the implications of the use of private data in the wake of the revelation that Cambridge Analytica, (a UK data mining firm) allegedly used the data of 50 million Facebook users to possibly influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and the Brexit vote. But who owns your “garbage data?” The automated collection trucks will be outfitted with recording cameras. In conjunction with the unique radio frequency ID tags imbedded in all of our garbage carts, a video can be recorded to document what each of us is putting in our collection carts.

The concept is to ensure that you and I are good citizens and not putting garbage in the blue cart or recyclables in the waste cart.

The data owners could determine the bad citizens who do not use their recycling carts enough. Who owns that data? Could the truck owners sell the data? Could an employer look at your “garbage history” to see if it contains an abundance of liquor bottles or the remains of your private marijuana grow-op? Could the RCMP obtain it with a subpoena?

Apparently there are no rules as to who owns the data:. There are also no rules about how long it is retained.

We need to insist that our local representatives set the rules to protect us.

John Dorn is a retired tech entrepreneur living in Summerland.