Coming To Our Senses, Eh?

The Canadians seem to be doing something right with one of their waste disposal programs. Using indicators that were traditionally ignored, meaning indicators other than straight economic data, to measure the benefits of their program (and factoring in quantified costs extrapolated from externalities) is a great leap forward on how we measure our environmental and social impacts. I never really thought I’d see any progress in North America for a long time (regarding applied sustainability theory- we always had examples from the small community level that we’d study and discuss- rarely something really big in scale as this), but am happy that the theory and ideas that I studied back in my Environmental Studies classes in Santa Barbara are actually being successfully implemented on a large scale. One of my favorite parts from this article states that the community had a large part in making the program work. Seeing what this community has done together is inspiring.