The message is finally trickling through to the "Powers That Be" that it's time for real action to reduce the amount of garbage being dumped into our landfills.

Lip service is one thing, but a visit to a landfill shows just how many usable resources we throw away.

We're actually creating small mountains with our buried garbage. But, garbage out of sight is garbage out of mind.

Individuals and a few companies have been crying in the wilderness for over 25 years, pointing out how "used" materials can be re-used or recycled. This has a number of real benefits:

First, re-used materials are usually much less expensive than today's replacements. Second, they're often of better quality -- used flooring or structural beams taken from old buildings being demolished is first-growth lumber, available only at premium prices from lumber yards.

Another attraction is the craftsmanship that went into materials in days gone by; mass-produced products just can't have that attention to detail found in older buildings. The traditions used are part of our heritage, and shouldn't be dumped.

Of course, I've been talking primarily about used building materials, but tons of wasted resources vanish daily, with barely an attempt to recover them. It's part of the "disposable society" way of thinking that sprang up during the Second World War, when a job had to be done no matter what the cost. That attitude continued after the war, when a flood of new and improved consumer products hit the market. The attitude continues today, with throw-away electronic equipment.

What we must do is find better ways of re-using good resources so that society (you and me) doesn't have to pay to dispose of them, that conserve remaining natural resources, and that create new niches for economic opportunity. This creates jobs, and in this day and age of shrinking payrolls, jobs are important.

This approach means people with vision must look at what we throw away, and if they can't be re-used; or develop new products to fill specific needs.

While it's fine to crush used glass bottles and ship them out of province for re-processing into glass, there are other potential uses right here in the province. Glass bottles can be puverized into sand and used as backfill around new homes, for example. Or ground glass can be used as a reflective agent in highway paint.

The same kind of thinking must be given to old rubber tires. Surely there must be some viable use for the mountains of used tires that dot our countryside. A use that's more environmentally-friendly than grinding tires into small bits to be re-used in asphalt roads, or heating and "distilling" them to produce petroleum products.

Where are our entrepreneurs? When are they going to realize that free natural resources are being dumped into landfills for future archaeologists to ponder over?

When are we going to seize the opportunities just waiting for us?