Garbage
August 27th, 2008Mirriam-Webster defines garbage as so:
- Main Entry:
- gar·bage
- Pronunciation:
- \ˈgär-bij\
- Function:
- noun
- Etymology:
- Middle English, offal
- Date:
- 15th century
1 a: food waste b: discarded or useless material2 a: trash 1b b: inaccurate or useless data
Interesting idea, that material is useless. Discarded, certainly. It looks like offal and by extension food waste are the primary sources for the word, as originally people didn’t have much else to discard. Eventually once they took up agriculture, a lot of the food waste could end up being used eventually as fertilizer. The modern concept of garbage is relatively recent, coming about especially in the past hundred years as “planned obsolescence’ became a cornerstone of the modern economy. Either you are compelled to get the latest and greatest whatever, or the old shit you bought a year ago just up and broke.
Unfortunately, this is not sustainable, and yet no one has put much thought into the future yet, it seems. I can’t help but think that in the near future, landfills are going to be mined as the gold mines they actually are. Unless someone develops a straightforward and relatively inexpensive way to directly convert matter into energy (and back again, preferably), the raw materials we use to operate or civilization are slowly being depleted. Rather, the easy to get sources are being depleted. Hell, did you know we’re running out of helium? It is true, god doesn’t come behind and restock the shelves after we’re gone through and plundered them. Sure, Cod may rebound off the coast of New England if we stop raping the shit out of their collected assholes every fucking year, but raw resources are in simply finite. In the short term, we’re going to start hitting walls.
I bring this up because I was remind as I hauled the garbage to the curb that I meant to describe how we’re handling garbage as a household these days. I used to burn everything that was not recyclable or simply nonburnable (batteries, glass, and so on).  Now, we’re separating everything out further yet. Paper, recyclable plastic, metal and glass get recycled. Organics get composted. Paper and similar products which are not easily recyclable are put into a burn pile, and all of the plastic (wrappers, polypropylene, bags, and so on) that are not easily recyclable are put into the “actual garbage” stream. I do not feel that bad throwing //just this//, as I figure in thirty years someone will have finally gotten a good handle on thermal depolymerization and they’ll start building recycling plants on top of landfills, reversing their flow.  At least, if we make it that long, landfills will go from a liability to a resource rich deposit. You see, it isn’t really garbage at all, we just haven’t realized that sustainability is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NECESSARY AND THE ONLY PART OF THE EQUATION WORTH DISCUSSING.
I can’t stand throwing things in the trash… Even though we recycle practically everything, I still feel like we could do better. Recycling all of our junk mail really helped cut down on the amount we burn, now if we could only find somewhere that recycles paperboard (chipboard, ie cereal box-type packaging)! I did a little search via earth911.org and found out that the nearest place is the Lycoming County Waste Authority located in Montgomery. Hmmm, we may have to make a monthly drop off…to recycle or burn? The choice is clear.
Because we have decided to try our absolute best to pare down our garbage as much as possible…I had been on a search of trying a different type of cat litter…something that is flushable and septic tank friendly. I would say that our “garbage” right now consists of 95% cat waste/litter. We had tried Swheat Scoop last year for a few weeks but I did not like the way it smelled or worked. Looking into litters that are earth friendly (as opposed to clay based litter which apparently is acquired through strip mining) I have narrowed my choices down to litters made from recycled newspapers, wood waste (pine pellets) and litter made from paper waste. Continuing my search, I learned about a product to help toilet train your cat. I thought to myself, well hell yea, If I can train them to go in the toilet I will have eliminated 95% of our garbage! Needless to say, although I am a bit skeptical, I ordered it…Litter Kwitter (check it out at http://www.litterkwitter.com). It came in the mail today but I am not going to break it out until our house is done being renovated. I’ll try to keep updates on how their progress goes.
Anyway, if it can be recycled it should be recycled! Or reused, sold, given away, donated. No excuses allowed, we are responsible, we need to be held accountable for our actions or non-actions. Sure, it’s so easy to just not think about it, to put on blinders, to use ignorance as an excuse, to let someone else deal with it, etc, etc. Of course that’s easy, just put everything in the trash, one receptacle, one garbage can, for pick up on one day a week…yes, I realize that “easy” is the preferred method…but “easy” is not the answer.
Wake up America! Recycle America!
Here’s a quote from Julie after I read that the litter kwitter would work in 8 weeks or less:
“We couldn’t even train Connor that quick”.
I admit the only things we recycle right now are Glass/Aluminum. Anything that burns we burn. The main reason behind burning plastic is that the recycle center down the road doesn’t take plastic or I would. Another problem we have is we really don’t have a place to store the stuff. When I use to live on Oliver Street we had a enclosed back porch that with a little work I turned into a nice recycling station. Newspapers/Magazines here, Plastic there, Cans in the bucket, & Glass here. This all sounds very familiar. Ah yes. Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfS0Gvp6f_I
If there would be one thing that we could recycle I would, would be our kids shit catchers a.k.a. diapers. The garbage cans run over with shit!
John, you hate baby jesus don’t you?
Things will never be the same between him & I…
Last night “TinyBabyJesus” was in the Durka. I should have ran up and knifed him in the head, and then global-chatted “I just knifed teh baby jeebus in the head!!!!”, and then taken a screenshot of me tea-bagging the tiny baby jesus. Oh the fun I should have had…
It must have been something in your soul that stopped you…
Lack of motivation…
I came across this website today:
http://myzerowaste.com/
Only checked it out briefly so far but it looks like a very good idea/goal. Makes me want to further reduce our “rubbish”.