The Hidden Life of Garbage
by Kathy Armijo
It is interesting to note that garbage has always been an integral part of my life. As a child we’d go visit my Grandmother and would always beg to go to the dump. It was “fun” to see what you could find that was still salvageable – one person’s junk is another person’s treasure. Even in this incredibly small community, people are no longer permitted to scavenge or in more politically correct terms “recycle.”
For the life of me, I don’t understand why people are not permitted to go to the dump and take what they can re-use or even re-sell. Isn’t it better to use/re-use than to continue to pollute the environment? I certainly think so. While I can appreciate that perhaps the reason for not allowing rummaging in the dump is a potential liability, if people signed a waiver this would eliminate the risk for law suits if someone got injured. Granted there are many heavy duty machines working at the dump; to move the earth, dump the garbage, and the refill the hole with dirt. Still in the scheme of things and to protect our environment, we, as a society, need to reduce our garbage, become 100% invested in and use recycling, rid the industry of planned obsolescence, and generate an awareness that garbage has doubled in the last thirty (30) years.
On my way home from UNM on Friday, I was listening to a radio station. What caught my attention paralleled the film I’d just seen in sociology. The comment was to take your children on an outing to the dump. Why? It’s a good object lesson. I’m not so sure I would have “heard” that had the comment been made on any other given day. The key [as I see it] is AWARENESS. In the late 1960s, the media bombarded all age groups with “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute.” This created a resurgence of recycling. Somehow this concept has not continued into the younger generations. I suspect that such a keen awareness has not been ingrained into generations subsequent to the 1980s.
In part I think it is because of the bombardment of commercialism/capitalism. Buy this! Buy that! You can’t live without this “new, improved, innovative, technologically advanced” gadget. At every turn, children have to have the latest version of whatever because it’s in vogue. Adults have bought into the notion that he who dies with the most toys wins. Not so, he who dies with the most toys still – dies.
What is the solution to garbage? Make a compost is certainly one alternative. However, that only takes care of items that are biodegradable and presuming you don’t live in an apartment complex. What about natural resources? In an effort to minimize our use of water, they have developed a toilet that uses less water and encourage you to do your part to help save the planet. Now, what do you do with the old one? Which is worse, thousands of toilets at the dump or more water usage when the toilet is flushed? I don’t know the answer, but I can surmise that in the name of progress we can expect to have more garbage. Out with the old, in with the new. Let’s make more garbage. Better yet, why don’t we ship our garbage to other planets? By transporting our garbage to Pluto [which is no longer really a planet] we might be able to save our planet from global warming and eminent disaster. That idea is truly outlandish, but unless we encourage manufacturers to update technology without eliminating the “container,” we can expect to have garbage continue to grow exponentially. The adage “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” is certainly applicable to diminishing planned obsolescence and encourages technological advancements that utilize new concepts in the “original package.” By using this concept, capitalism can still continue to grow and we will have a planet to pass onto upcoming generations without fear.
If just one large industry would embrace the concept of recycling the “shell” and infuse the new technology, garbage could be significantly reduced. The “guts” that are removed could either be retooled or broken down and reused. Of course, this would all have to come at a saving to the consumer, otherwise why bother, and a profit to the industry. I can see this concept snowballing and turning garbage into new, improved, technologically advanced gadgets and reducing [or perhaps even eliminating] planned obsolescence.
