About a month ago in discussion I suggested that if neighbourhoods were required to manage their own waste, as in each maintain their own small landfill, things we change pretty darn fast. People would immediately drastically reduce their waste, and public support for extended producer responsibility would be high enough to enforce the kind of laws they have in places like Germany.
To advocate for such a proposal – putting a landfill in one’s own neighbourhood – is probably a tough sell. I was thinking that this is kind of a reverse NIMBYism, or YIMBYism, referring the the phenomenon of people not wanting any undesirable things which have to exist somewhere to be anywhere near them. YIMBY on Wikipedia is an interesting short article which introduced me to the similar concepts of BANANA and CAVE People (see the article) but also points to a narrower definition that would really include my landfill example. So a better description would have to be extreme yimbism.
In a related note, it seems that Toronto had its 4th Annual YIMBY Festival yesterday.
Also regarding the word “waste” I agree with Tom Watson that it should be treated only as a noun rather than a verb, which he alludes to in his recent post Why phone books matter on new producer responsibility legislation in Seattle.