Stefan Modesty

My two cents on the environment. I believe in waste not, want not — and I'm pretty sure I got that from my German grandparents, people who came out the other end of World War 2 with almost nothing and wasted even less. That mentality seems common among older Europeans who lived through scarcity. I just don't see it reflected in North America the same way, especially among younger generations whose parents never faced a major war or shortage in their lifetimes.

Take a dustpan and broom as an example. You can buy a plastic one at the dollar store for $8.00, a slightly better plastic one at a department store for $18.99, or a used steel one at a thrift store for $5.00 — possibly made in the USA or Canada, or at least a higher-quality import from 20 years ago. The two plastic ones were almost certainly made somewhere in Asia, by workers earning lower wages, under looser labour and environmental standards than anything we'd accept here.

Now think about the journey that cheap dustpan took to reach your hands. It gets loaded onto a truck, transferred to a train, loaded onto a cargo ship — one that burns some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet — crosses the Pacific, arrives at a west coast port, gets trucked to a warehouse, sorted at a logistics hub, and trucked again to a store. Then you drive to get it, or a delivery vehicle brings it to your door. The carbon footprint of that $8.00 dustpan is staggering when you actually stop to add it up.

And then it breaks. You can't fix it, and honestly, most people won't bother trying. So the whole chain starts over again. Meanwhile, that beat-up steel one from the thrift store? It would have lasted you a lifetime.

What gets me is how much waste exists just to sustain this cycle — all in the name of consumerism and keeping the economy moving. And it's getting harder to opt out. As things get financially tougher for the middle class, cheap disposable products are practically the only option available. We're almost forced to participate in a system that burns enormous resources to deliver us something that ends up in a landfill in six months.

If more people carried that post-WW2 mentality — make the best of what you have, don't replace what can be repaired, don't buy what was cheaply made in the first place — we'd be in better shape. Keep the 20-year-old coffee maker that was built in Germany or Ohio. You don't need a WiFi-connected smart appliance with a subscription update to make your morning cup. Nuts and bolts, my friend. Nuts and bolts. Stop buying garbage, and look into the Right to Repair movement — it's more important than most people realize.

I am all for anything that keeps the TTC clear of danger for its tax-paying riders. Why has it become a living room for vulnerable folks in crisis? I recall a Toronto comedian once describing it as a piss-smelling mental hospital on wheels. Harsh — but somewhere between Union Station and Kipling, you understand exactly what he meant.

I have witnessed open drug use from one end of this city to the other. Many riders are simply fatigued — fatigued with feeling like an afterthought to the governments they elect and the agencies they fund. We Canadians need to push through this and take our cities back. I remember hiding around a corner in the '90s to smoke a joint — we were discreet. That discretion has vanished entirely. I hope Doug delivers some real transit enforcement. Sorry softies, but riders deserve to feel safe and comfortable on a system they pay for.

You walk in with a list. A firm, decisive, adult list. Fourteen minutes later you are standing in the snack aisle holding a bag of something called "Blazin' Ranch Spirals" trying to remember what protein is.

The grocery store is engineered against you. The milk is always at the back. The checkout lane candy is positioned at the exact height of a tired adult's last remaining willpower. The free sample table exists solely to weaponize your sense of social obligation.