If we don't reduce our own garbage, magnify this refusal by the thousands of local residents, and there's our mountain of garbage. It starts in our homes.

You and I and our neighbours are producing tonnes of broken, used, rotting, dirty, worn-out stuff. It contaminates our water table; burning it poisons our air, and the heavy metals and chemical residues pollute their immediate surroundings, which includes our food and us.

Since pollution's time frame is slow -- who sees a river become polluted? - and our individual contribution is relatively small, we easily avoid serious action.

We avoid doing our share because we have so many other things to do. Rush to work, rush home, cook, clean, talk on the phone, watch an hour or two of the tube, talk to three or ten people, haul the kids to their activities . . . what to cut out isn't easy.

But the bottom line of the waste problem is to cool down our life styles. Buying less stuff puts less stuff into the loop. The best advice is to buy better things, not more things.

And reuse. Our problem with reuse is that we're convinced everything should look brand new. Yes, yes, we have built an economy that runs full-tilt, creates jobs and salaries all of which must be spent and recycled to keep the economy going. But consider that if our economy must recycle money constantly to survive, why not recycle other things, too?

Judging from the stuff people buy with their so-important salaries, hey, is this full-volume, laying-to-waste of the world, and then wrapping it in plastic for sale, what we really want?

At the very minimum we have to support political leaders and businesses which work to improve our environment. That doesn't take a lot of time, although we do have to think hard about the issues because all sides have the advertising industry under contract, and ads are mind-benders. Or ignorers. Or distracters. We can promote the idea of organic composting. We can buy local produce and less packaging.

Most of all, we have to start living as though we really live here on the earth and aren't just passing through. We have to live here in a way that reflects how much we love where we live. Who is unaffected by a sunset? Or the green burst of spring? This planet is our home, all that we've got, our start and our finish.

Stop putting stuff in the garbage! Make opening the garbage can a stop-and-think operation: isn't this recyclable? And stop dumping stuff into our lives. Stop carting stuff into our homes, day after day. Rich and poor: less stuff means fewer problems. Less stuff means a cleaner, happier life. Less means more.

Fred Ryan is publisher of Quebec's Aylmer Bulletin, West Quebec Post, and the Pontiac Journal. He is also a director of the Quebec Community Newspapers Association.

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Copyright © 2006 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/09.06