Trash Monster

I have a hard enough time just taking my trash to the dumpster before it overflows out of the can and into the kitchen. Although the dumpster is a mere 30 yards away from the front door, I pretty much put it off until the last moment, which is usually the moment when the smell of the garbage hitting my face makes me grimace as I walk in the front door. It's even harder now that I have a baby, what with the diapers and all. Because of the diapers, I have been thinking about how much waste my family generates. It's a little scary when you think to yourself, "Where does my trash go?" I know, I know, it goes to the landfill. Being the mathematical thinker that I am, I came up with an equation to help clarify my thinking: (2+ trash bags/week/family) x (the whole city) = ???. Do we ever think where our garbage is going to end up when we're throwing it in the trash can? What's going to happen when this landfill is full?

The Eastern Garbage Patch is an area of dead current in the Pacific Ocean that is filled with dumped garbage and it is twice the size of Texas. It's pretty much a landfill in the middle of an ocean.

Kamikatsu is a village in eastern Japan that has adopted a "zero-waste" policy, meaning they sort all of their non-biodegradable garbage into 34 separate recycle bins and compost the rest. I know Americans are nowhere near this kind of effort, but we could be doing so much better! (My condo complex doesn't even have recycling; I have to take it to my parent's house in Glendale.)

We are meant to take care of this planet, and I hope we can control our huge garbage-producing appetites that are perpetuating a culture of waste.

The trash monster that you see above is courtesy of kozyndan.

I'll write something less preachy next time.