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Disney’s Gospel For a Sustainable World Needs A Lesson in Recycling

Submitted by Kim on Saturday, 16 February 20082 Comments

There’s no doubt about it. Disney is a powerhouse of fun and fascination, especially if you have kids and can see it through their eyes. Mine are too old to dress up as princesses and have tea in in the castle but we were enthralled by the sheer number of little girls dressed in such finery. Just look in their eyes and you’ll see someone waiting for a pumpkin to turn into a carriage.

In the Animal Kingdom my family was took the Wildlife Express train up to Rafiki’s Planet Watch where we were lectured by a recording of the famous baboon of Lion King fame. As we sat waiting for the train to take us back one of my guys – aged 11 – pipes up, “Hey Dad, where do we put our plastic cups?” That’s when it dawned on me: Disney does NOT recycle. Rafiki preached to us about being guardians of the planet while tons of garbage goes into landfills from the theme parks every day.

We had two more Disney parks to go so I began keeping a mental record of recycling initiatives and found but a handful. And these were for plastic cups and bottles. In fact, more than a few plastic containers were missing the recycle triangle and those that had them were for nothing because there was just one type of receptacle: garbage.

This may not bother many visitors but in Nova Scotia we have been trained to recycle for fifteen years now. (Last week the city stopped taking old electronic appliances like T.V’s and computers to landfills. They now have to go to a separate depot.) So my kids have grown up separating the garbage into components for reuse and compost. Not doing it was like playing hookey from school. It was unnatural and they felt uncomfortable doing it.

The best remark I got was at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I bought coffee from a girl in a kiosk and, while waiting for the kids to finish the Arrowsmith ride, I went up and asked to to refill the plastic cups. She offered me new cups but I refused. Mine were fine. She responded, “I’ve been here for almost 3 years and you’re the first one to ask me to refill their coffee cups!”

But, you know, the rest of Orlando was much the same. And that’s a lot of reusable material being buried.