Paper, Metal, Plastic, and other Trash
I've been thinking a lot about trash lately...I mean we really throw a lot of that stuff out. I think about MacDonalds. Everytime they sell a burger you get a bag, a napkin and a wrapper that gets tossed away within a half an hour...and then if you include a drink and fries there's a cup with a lid, a straw, a fries wrapper and probably a ketchup packet or two... In Gainesville there are probably five or six MacDonalds...think about all the trash these five or six places will generate in one hour on an average day...never mind a day, a week, a month, or a year.
I stopped buying newspapers every day because I would read the headlines, the sports and an article or two and throw it away. What do we do with all the newspapers that are tossed out everyday...I mean to tell you, the NY Times, LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post...every little podunk has got its own daily or weekly rag that gets partially read and then thrown out...that's a lot of paper and a lot of trees. I wonder how much of it gets recycled. Are there any newspaper recycling facilities in Florida?
I recently heard and interesting statistic about China. It seems that they threw out 45 billion pairs of disposable chop sticks last year...this accounts for about 25 billion trees...where do they throw it all?
Solid wast is indeed an incredible problem. Our landscape is spotted with landfills that are filled with our daily garbage and trash. Have you ever though of what is in a landfill...bottles, cans, food, diapers, yards trash, plastic, cardboard, organic waste, aluminum
foil, tissue paper and used paper towels...shall I continue? What a lot of people don't realize is that there are a lot of liquids that are throw into landfills. From the little tiny bit of milk left in a milk carton or orange juice in an orange juice container to engine oil left in a plastic oil bottle to shampoo to cleaning solutions to disposed medicines to anything liquid that goes in the trash...it all leaks down to the bottom of the landfill and eventually into the ground water. And we are doing this all over our country. Solid waste management has actually become a major industry in the United States.If you add up all of the solid waste generated by restaurants (fast food and otherwise), school lunch programs, the construction industry, and the professional sports entertainment industry it is mind boggling.
These are just my thoughts as I sit around and think while I drink my coffee which was probably exploited from some third world nation. I shall return and we can talk solutions and stuff.
posted by edlegare @ 10:51 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
I liked your post. I think we each need to do our part to reduce our waste each day. Many of the items you mentioned can be recycled - tin and aluminum cans, plastic bottles and containers, cardboard, glass (white, green, and brown), and even newspapers. In Citrus County, we have a voluntary recycling program. I am always happily surprised that I find quite a few people there each time I go. We keep a large crate in our garage and when we use an item that can be recycled (that we don't want to reuse ourselves), we put it there and take it once every week or so. In our county, they also take newspapers, but I prefer not to subscribe to them. I use the internet to get news. CNN is willing to send you a news update each morning to your email with the major headlines. It is called CNN AM Quicknews. You can subscribe to it for free and they send you the headlines - if you are interested in an article, you can click on it and it will open up the entire article. Just delete it when you are done. Organic waste is also a problem. We created our own composter for our garden and any of our kitchen waste goes into that. In about 3 months, we have some great nutrient rich soil for our garden. Having a garden is another way to eliminate waste because you carry your food from garden to table - versus extra packaging that gets thrown away. A wise man once mentioned to me that a major cause of waste in the landfill is disposable daipers. There are so many cloth diaper options out there and the entire process is extremely managable. I have switched over completely and feel that this is a great way to reduce waste. There are also great alternatives to feminine hygiene products that are safer for women and produce no waste. There is so much you can do to make changes in your amount of waste and your load on the environment. It only tastes a small step each day to produce a big step overall. Are you willing to try?
I agree that foods are probably pumped with steriods and poisons. It is very costly to try to eat better and gowing your own food takes time and patience.
I do wonder about the "sending our trash into space" idea. Is it so hard to just reduce what we use? For every action there is a reaction, so while the idea might seem good to rid the planet of our waste, we really don't know the ramifications of this idea. It's the whole cause and effect thing - typically we don't tend to think about the consequences that our actions have on others (other people or aliens) because we are in such a "me" world, but it could really help the situation if we looked at the big picture and everyone in it.
Thanks for clarifying that - you did say "the sun". But I do wonder if there could be some kind of bi-product of the burning of our trash (chemicals, materials, etc.) by the sun. It would just be good to look at it from all angles. If there was a bi-product that could end up polluting space, it may cause future problems, similar to the pollution that is affecting our ozone layer.
Agreed! Nice chatting with you. I assume you are one of Mr. Legare's students at Oak Hall.
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