It has been said that improper waste management today will create long-term economic liabilities tomorrow: high cleanup costs, health-related expenses, loss of valuable resources.

Are these strong enough reasons to reduce waste and pollution?

Judging from present trends, perhaps not.

Short-term cost savings are a powerful incentive for corporations and governments to defer waste management and allow pollution to increase.

Waste can contain “valuable resources,” but separating these out can be more expensive than extracting new ones. Nutrients and organic matter in household waste can be returned to the land, but this is costly as well.

As for the heath-related expenses associated with irresponsible waste management, this becomes a concern for society at large, rather than for resource owners and managers.

Also, future generations do not vote today. This creates an added motivation to burden them with our waste, rather than dealing with it now.

Canada’s provincial governments “own” natural resources. To stimulate economic development, they often choose to allow resource depletion and pollution to occur at the maximum rate that people will accept.

Waste and pollution can eventually reach a level where impacts on health and property values become obvious, causing societal push-back. If this affects their electability, politicians may put........

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