Everybody knows

Unsurprisingly, I am greeted by the sight of one or two catalogues every time I check my mail. Some clever person realized that people up here need mail order shopping. This isn't to say that the stores here don't offer clothes and home furnishings; the prices are obscenely inflated. People with discerning tastes, such as myself, have little time or need for the goods offered in these flyers and, consequently, the catalogues end up in the recycle bin. This would be all well and good if Inuvik actually had a recycling program for paper. I was surprised to learn at work, where we generate a lot of paper waste, that the blue boxes were all for show.

As my one of my students would say 'this is killer bad.' Not only does the town of Inuvik throw out all of its own paper, but it also adds paper from the rest of the Canada, and beyond, in the form of catalogues and flyers. It made me appreciate that larger cities have to be a lot more accountable for what they recycle and what they throw away. This isn't to say the larger cities are perfect but they are at least taking steps, and have the facilities to reduce what ends up in land fills.

On the plus side, Inuvik does have a recycling program for cans and bottles. Pictured above is a large block of crushed cans outside of the Inuvik bottle depot.

I am about conduct something of a social experiment in a few minutes so I'll finish this post with:

Inexcusable Excuses

• Went to bank to replace lost debit card
• Daughter hadn't come home and couldn't leave because door couldn't be locked
• Couldn't wake up babysitter