We never really think about what happens to our garbage; we just throw it into the garbage bins and it gets taken away.I remember one of the earliest times that I ever considered what happens with what we throw away. It was when my father took me to a local landfill on Long Island that had been partially converted into a park. We used to go crabbing there and I had always thought that it was incredible that the big hill I was standing on was made of garbage. In retrospect, it seems almost ironic that they used a landfill to create something that promotes environmental awareness like a park does. However putting a nice little park over the landfill does little to alleviate the growing problem of our garbage accumulation.
In my personal family, we try to limit our garbage use. My dad lives by the philosophy that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. He not only saves our own junk to refurbish and reuse but also gathers what other people are throwing out. All of my family’s bicycles are bicycles that my dad recovered from other people’s trash. My dad also always had my sisters and I gather our family’s glass bottles and aluminum cans and return them at our grocery store so we could get the deposit back. My grandparents would have a compost and save their food garbage to use to make soil for their plants. There are many different ways to try and reuse items to limit our consumption of goods and creation of garbage.
At work I see the other end of the spectrum. I work at two different jobs in the food service industry and it is apparent that ridiculous amounts of garbage are generated in this industry. Not only is all half-eaten food thrown out, but all food that is made by mistake, left out, old, or tainted is as well. At the end of night I am left taking out bag after bag of garbage. Also neither of my jobs has an adequate recycling program. I am always left throwing out numerous bottles and cans. Also at each of jobs, one employee has tried to collect the recyclables themselves but it has been unfeasible for one person to collect that many bottles and cans and they have given up. On a related note, my mother works as a nurse in the neonatal ICU ward and can confirm the sheer amount of diapers that are thrown out each day. She also says that she has witnessed many parents swear they are going to use cloth diapers either for environmental reasons or to save money, only to give up later once they realized what exactly cloth diapers entail and how often newborns have to go to the bathroom. She has yet to see anyone stick with cloth diapers yet.
I think that the biggest issue when it comes to environment is what to do with our wastes. We have learned that our toxic wastes pollute or breathing air and drinking water, while our material wastes are taking up and dirtying our space. As our population grows, the amount of waste we generate will only grow as well. I think more should be done to encourage recycling or even composting so food and other waste that would decompose easily can be dealt with in a more environmentally sound way. It seems strange that if New York City is able to keep detailed accounts of what garbage was thrown out that they couldn’t then separate this garbage to recycle what could be recycled.
