[photopress:Capetown_car1.jpg,thumb,alignright][photopress:Captetown_car2.jpg,thumb,alignright]Wow! Bob Mills knows about garbage, land-fill, incineration and gasification, and he is passionate about them. His interview with Anna Maria Tremonti was really interesting. In the last few years, I spent 4 months of sabbatical and research time in Sweden, so I am well aware of what various European countries are doing with things like co-generation around incineration and mining of garbage dumps. The "con" position, to the gasification technology being expounded by Bob Mills, was provided by Clarissa Morawski, the principal of CM Consulting.

Bob Mills and his wife aren't the only people with a passion for recycling and garbage. In my Applied Plant Ecology and graduate courses, students invariably do seminars and papers on garbage, e-waste, etc. and, on my holidays, I always look out for how people deal with garbage and recycling.

In Cape Town, South Africa, you know that garbage is a valued resource for the very poor, who live in the shanties of the Cape Flats, because they turn it into unbelievable art, that they sell to tourists. Here's a true piece of modern, African art, that I bought from a street vendor in 2004. He and his family had walked into South Africa from neighbouring Zimbabwe, to escape the troubles. He did not make this, he was merely the seller, but I did not bargain with him for any of what I bought (and I do know how to bargain). This is a 15 cm long model of a VW Beetle. It's made from an aerosol can of bug spray. The wheels are made from bottle caps of Schweppes sparkling lemon, and Golden Pilsner beer. I doubt whether the average Canadian who, in 2002, was estimated to have produced 383 kg of residential solid waste, could be this creative with their garbage.

Dawn R. Bazely

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