Editor,
Like most matters in a small town, just about every topic generates discussion, some of it acrimonious at times.
To add a little fuel to the fire, so to speak, I have a largish backyard complete with a burn barrel – actually an old tub from a long gone washing machine. It has always nagged at my conscience a bit whenever I burned brush and wood scraps from my workshop until one day I hit upon what I thought was the ideal solution. I have huge cedars at the bottom of my garden so I started piling the stuff up along the base of the trees. It rots down and returns to the soil providing the perfect environmental answer, or does it?
Upon doing some research it turns out that exactly the same amount of carbon and methane are released back into the system, just at a slower rate. So, the wood chips that you can pick up at the leaf yard to put on your flower beds does the same thing.
Maybe I am missing something. No doubt some scientist in our midst will offer clarification, but at the end of the day it seems we can’t win.
David Blackburn, Meaford
