Trash Dumping Could Lead To International Crisis

"Since the Keele Valley landfill closed at the end of 2002, Toronto has sent more than 100 trucks daily on an 800-kilometre round trip to the Carleton Farms landfill south-west of Detroit...Toronto's paralysis over its waste inspires derision among Canadians elsewhere...since the terrorist attacks of September, 2001, Americans have become acutely concerned about what comes across their northern border. Worries about explosives, bio-terror, food contamination and terrorist infiltration have already added new and costly layers of security to border crossings...[Toronto] can encourage reduction, reuse and recycling by abandoning its primitive property-tax financing of garbage disposal for a pay-per-throw system that confronts citizens with the true cost of the waste they produce...Indefinite shipping of more than a million metric tons of waste a year south of the border...makes it only a matter of time until something nasty in a green plastic bag turns Toronto's trash into a national crisis."