Dear Harry

We go through a lot of rubber gloves in our business. It is a real waste, there must be something to do with them. -- Molly

Dear Molly

Aside from making water cannons from them, there are a lot of unconventional uses. No. 1 Cut the fingers from the glove. Put one finger on the end of a broomstick, now lean it against the wall. notice it won't slide and it won't scratch the wall. You can do this to your mop or rake. No. 2 Cut large circles and use them as jar openers for those hard-to-open jars. 3. Cut at the wrist and make rubber bands. 4. Take two fingers and put them over the jaws of a pair of pliers and they won't mar things. 5. Slip a single finger over you index finger when you need to sort through papers quicly. 6. Cut flower shapes from the beaded part of the glove and glue them to the bottom of your tub. The rubber prevents slipping. use Pliobond Glue as this glue can be removed later with nail polish remover.

Dear Harry

How much garbage does the average person create in a lifetime? -- Elmo

Dear Elmo

One person creates an astounding 80 cans of garbage in just one year. If you live to be the ripe old age of 80, that's an incredible 6,400 cans. Now, stretch these cans side by side in a row and you get more than three kilometers, or get this, 20 city blocks. Think about your next purchases at the grocery store, can you buy products with less packaging, can you reuse something you would ordinarily just toss out?

Dear Harry

I am a contractor in town, I have just finished renovating a rooming house with 10 rooms. It was a real shame to throw out all the doors and trims that were in the building; and the cost to dump these goods was expensive. I know about used building material yards, but is it really worth my time? -- By The Hour

Dear By The Hour

You might be pleasantly surprised. Those doors may have fetched you up to $20.00 each, depending on their design. The trims may have been worth up to $1.00/ft. People are now aware that older is better and those old doors could have ended up as an entrance door to a cottage or laundry room door in a basement. The new name for these are architectural artifacts (old doors). You can recycle and put some cash in your jeans.

It's too bad that we couldn't have a referendum vote on the environment, maybe it would motivate some of our leaders to act upon what we the people see as a really important issue. Just think about it. Brian could call the ministers to a meeting in Garbage town and have a Leach Lake Accord allotting 25% of the budget to clean-up. Sharon Carstairs would be just outside the dump telling us we don't understand the issue and that the government is selling us down the Love Canal. Ovide would tell us it's not a native issue and that he would vote with the other leaders. The CBC and Peter Mansbridge could document it all and have town hall meetings live from the Brady Road Dump.

Seriously, it's about time the government started putting it's time into cleaning up the environment. not only for the environment but as job creation. The environment is targeted as one of the leading economic and social issues that the government and the world must face now.