Today brings yet another fresh ripple of trash-related intrigue from that ever-dependable wellspring of such stuff, Toronto.

 

In a lengthy report, the Toronto Globe & Mail analyzes the waste-diversion statistics being put out by the administration of recently re-elected Mayor David Miller and pronounces them, oh, let´s just say squishy -- i.e., in the argot and spirit of the moment, not the kind of ground you´d want to try to make a sharp cut on if, say, a defender was blocking your path to paydirt.

 

By the way, how about those Buckeyes? (Note to Lance, our company computer guru: For the next couple months, please set spam filter to block all e-mails originating from that state up north.)

 

Have you heard about the recent campaign by a Swiss adventurer named Bernard Weber to elect a new list of seven contemporary wonders of the world? If not, here´s the site where you can vote.

 

The reason I bring up Weber´s New 7 Wonders project here is that last week the New York Inquirer, an online newsmagazine covering Gotham, published an interesting piece proposing seven new waste-related wonders of the world. It starts with the giant floating field of plastic trash discovered not long ago in the Pacific, ends with the equally renowned electronic waste dumps of Guiyu, China (chronicled in the pages of Waste News and elsewhere), and visits a number of fascinating places in between.

 

Five of them, in fact. I know, because I counted.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.