My climate anxiety has turned me into a trash hoarder

This First Person column is written by Chris Middleton who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

I have a problem throwing away takeout containers.

You might be familiar with them especially with the pandemic; they're rectangular, black plastic containers with a clear plastic lid, usually adorned with some restaurant brand sticker. These containers are food safe, microwave friendly, easily stackable, and sturdy enough to transport even the steamiest carbs directly from a restaurant to my sad, sad door.

One problem: they're not recyclable.

While Toronto's recycling program allows you to recycle most plastics, any black plastic is undetectable to their automated recycling systems. Apparently, the optical sensors that do the sorting at recycling facilities can't see black plastics. Calls to ban these containers have been made, but whether the government has even discussed the ban is about as opaque as the containers we're trying to get rid of.

That's fine though! These containers can be easily reused. They're sturdy, and I make a lot of food anyway, so this is a good storage option…

Cut to now, where my acquisition of these plastic containers is currently outpacing my need for them. They've slowly taken over my kitchen space faster than my dirty dishes, which is impressive if you know my cleaning habits. I'm currently drowning in a sea of black plastic so large my boyfriend wants to drown me in it. Why can't I just have a problem with black mould like so many other Toronto apartments? It would be a lot more manageable and probably less toxic.

Keeping trash isn't necessarily a new thing for me. This habit, much like all my compulsive tendencies, comes from my mother — who is also experiencing the same problem with these black plastic containers. Though I have a feeling she's divided them up amongst my siblings in her will as a way out. Lucky.

My anxiety of not being wasteful has manifested in other ways. My closets are filled with plastic bags that I continue to shove into each other like some cannibalistic freak. The bottom shelf of my fridge is also a filled tower of tiny unmarked sauce cups that contain both liquids, solids or a varying state of both.

Keeping these free-form structures up are loose, unsorted condiment packets ranging from soy sauce, relish, and ketchup so old I don't know if it's the purple kind on purpose or it just developed that way. It's a city of forgotten toppings and I pay the land tax with shame and guilt.

Part of how my existential dread of climate change manifests is through paralysis. I try to be diligent about mitigating the waste I produce, and I'm having a hard time throwing away anything I feel could have a second life.

My aspiration in life is to be one of those people that has a tiny mason jar that contains all the trash I've collected over the past five years so I can flaunt it in people's faces. But I'm not that petty. Though not by much.

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Every day the climate crisis gets worse. I think about it when I feel the humid air in the middle of October that breaks up my sweater-weather aesthetic. Or when I read about the wildfires that are turning the West Coast into Pacific hellscape. While many I know have turned to nihilism, I've turned into an anxiety-ridden Oscar the Grouch, barking at people who don't rinse out their cans before recycling them.

A whopping 91% of plastic ever produced hasn't been recycled. This is a fact that's constantly living in the back of my mind whenever I'm purchasing anything that might contribute to that problem. I've started buying eco-conscious dental hygiene products which — if you've ever chomped on those toothpaste capsules and tasted the fluoride — are disgusting.

My laundry detergent no longer comes in tubs, but rather neat strips that I can only hope are working. I squeeze my dish soap concentrate into glass pumps out of a wax tube which... is actually really ingenious, and I recommend everyone switch to doing this.

I don't know what the perfect solution is other than to not waste (or eat out) so much. I'm going to start cooking more for my friends just to pass on these plastic containers and that will make it someone else's problem. But hey, it'll be good for my relationship, because my inability to waste has made my boyfriend — in a word — tired. 

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