As the year starts to wind into full force, I come back from the Christmas holiday season refreshed, well-rested and determined that the next 365+ days will be used to propel the cause and infrastructure for organics recovery and composting in Canada even further.

Thanks to a good rest, I have a calmer perspective right now which will, no doubt, diminish as the upcoming days and increased demands take their place in the priorities of my life.

Having been in Utopia for the entire holiday week --- a place where internet has yet to enter our home, where the fax machine needs to be plugged in and warmed up and where our telephone line, until only recently, had no answering machine connection --- I was able to enjoy just being. But over the many daily walks in the park next to my home, the lack of snow and the green-ness of everything, while personally wonderful, was beyond troubling from the perspective of what is happening to our environment.

Add the two announcements of last week about the polar bear being designated for the endangered species list http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061227-polar-bears.html and the massive ice break-up in Canada’s Arctic http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/28/tech-ellesmereiceshelfcollapse-20061228.html?ref=rss and the worrying accelerates.

Fortunately, we are back to work now where we can go from worrying to doing, propelled forward with the knowledge that better use of organic residuals can play a big part in helping to turn our environmental destiny towards a better directional path than the world of landfills and inattention to the health of our soils will ever lead.