(Source: http://www.sxc.hu)
Then our minds move on to something else. Of course, some of us try to recycle and then consider what can be recycled and what cannot. In that case, we look for these:
(Source: http://www.sxc.hu)
Then we've done our jobs and can move on. There's a problem, though. The things we no longer want don't disappear, even when we recycle. Sometimes the demand for recycled materials is lower than the supply of recycled materials. Sometimes the economy cannot support the market and areas that have recycling programs cannot find a taker for the items that have been recycled. According to this 2008 article in The Telegraph, the market for recyclables in the United States has crashed. Thus, the items that have been carefully washed and sorted into bins end up going where the rest of our refuse goes.
In case you weren't aware, here are a few places our discards end up:
(Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk)
(Source: http://www.sxc.hu)
(Source: www.austinpost.org)
(Source: http://www.heraldtimesonline.com)
Those of us who live in wealthy countries can make it appear as if our trash disappears. We can ship it overseas, to third world countries that need the meager amount of money that is paid to make our problem vanish. In those countries, our trash is heaped into mountains in impoverished communities where people, including children, are exposed to the toxins produced by the decaying garbage. Many of these people make a living out of picking through these festering piles of rot:
(Source: http://www.theworldrace.org/)
You see, our things don't disappear; they have to go somewhere. Sometimes we just pass our problems on to the less fortunate. It's a fact of life that possessions wear out, break, become obsolete. However, although we cannot eliminate this problem, we can alleviate it. We don't need to shop unnecessarily. We need to carefully think through our purchases, distinguish needs from wants, and demand that those items we do purchase are well made and built to last.
As I read about the rampant consumerism in the United States and elsewhere, I realize that at some point we are going to run out of places to hide our excesses. We're behaving much like the joke about the woman who is addicted to shopping and hides her purchases from her husband by putting them in the back of her overstuffed closet. The problem is, that closet is going to be full some day. Ultimately, it will eventually all come back to haunt us. And then what?
4 comments:
Still working on breaking that 3-month fill-up. I've switched to a lot more items in glass and maybe I'm fooling myself, but at least glass has a much shorter life-span than plastic. It's also too bad that metal is not really great because that's an always-in-demand resource.
As for Bel Canto, I say definitely give it a read. And as for wood floors, well, the dog has done enough damage running around the house. My friend has small divots all over her house from her pointy heels. The natural bristle broom is in a whole other sweeping league!
As they say, there is no "away" when it comes to trash. We've made great strides in this area but still have a long way to go. We live in the country and used to have a small dumpster for trash. That made sense when we were doing a lot of clean-up and remodeling (you should have seen this place when we bought it!) but several years ago it occurred to me that we didn't need all that. We then went to two large trash cans and now are down to one. We only fill it about once a month, though. I wish there were a better option. Perhaps I will get so good at not producing non-recyclable trash that my husband can just take a little bag to his work dumpster once in awhile. That's my goal.
Shona, my husband has found a source for recycling a variety of metals - apparently there's now a demand for it - so now I put metal into our metal recycling container rather than sending it to landfill.
Deanna, we're in the country, too, have to haul our our own garbage to the county dumpsters. I think we're down to about 1 large can of trash once or twice a month. I would like to reduce that and have a few ideas to that end. As we live on a large farm, I've told my husband I want him to find a place where I can bury trash that will decompose but that I can't recycle or put in our compost heap (i.e., wine corks, cardboard boxes that have food on them, etc.). I also want to reduce packaging and am starting to focus on taking reusable containers to the health food store to use at the bulk bins. Baby steps...
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