All the garbage that we humans produce on a daily basis has been bothering me for awhile now. I mean we all go to fast food places daily, and with just one meal, you get some cardboard, paper, styrofoam and most likely a large plastic cup for your soda. Now 90% of the time all this goes in the garbage can. Just one fast food restaurant produces several large bags of garbage on a daily basis.
I feel this is a big problem, but no one seems to be alarmed about it except me. It seems we all just go around, dum de dum de dum, and accept this as just a fact of life. Just the other day, I was listening to public radio and it was mentioned that one of the contributors to Global Warming is land fills.
Not to mention how many trees are sacrificed each day in order to feed this crazy pattern.
Recycling is one answer, but right now it’s more the exception than the rule, I feel.
My questions are: Why isn’t anyone else, ie someone political, concerned about this issue?
What is the solution? What can one person, little old me, do to help solve this problem?
A properly managed landfill doesn’t bother me as much as other forms of garbage disposal.
There really isn’t a solution, the way I look at it. Humans are always going to generate garbage. Our notions of sanitation insist that food be carefully wrapped in layers of plastic to keep it sterile. Babies poop a lot and need clean diapers. Toys come encased in layers of packaging designed to prevent theft. A vast number of items are designed to be one-use-only for convenience. (Swiffer, anyone?)
Recycling programs can only do so much, and frankly, a lot of people don’t care enough to participate in those.
I’ve read that the biggest filler of garbage dumps isn’t Papers or other trash-- it’s contruction debris. Think about the vast volume of waste that’s generated when the old Wal-Mart was torn down for another to be built in its place.
Landfills are amazing time capsules. Nothing decays in them. (Digs have been done in which food waste from the 1940s was found to be still in good condition.) Perhaps one day, when recycling technology has improved, we can mine landfills for materials instead of cutting down trees and using new patroleum to make plastics.
Campaign to get these companies to use more easily biodegradable packaging? As I recall, a lot of the fast food places stopped using styrofoam boxes in the 80s because of the concerns about how long it takes for styrofoam to decompose in the environment, so if you see that there are restaurants in your area that still use wasteful packaging you could be putting pressure on them to switch.
This one is more complicated than you think. We have been seeing a net gain of trees in the U.S. for a while now. If you want to see what massive tree sacrifice looks like, take a look at photos or drawings from before 1920 or so. Both Native Americans and early settlers practiced clear-cutting and deforestation on a scale that would be unthinkable today. New England was largely deforested 100 years ago. I have seen a photo of my house from that time and the landscape looks more like Kansas than New England today. Whole states were like that. Today, timber companies generally plant several trees for every one cut done so the number of trees is growing, not sinking.
In addition, it is young trees that do almost of the work of trapping undesirable gases from the atmosphere. Old growth forests aren’t very good in that regard so you have to be careful about the best choice in this case. Like nuclear energy, the knee-jerk environmentalist response sometimes matches up poorly with actual science.
This is another one you have to be careful about rather than have a knee-jerk response. As pointed out earlier, nothing is going to decay in most landfills so the biodegradable angle doesn’t hold much water there. One of the only places it would decay naturally is litter and we have to be careful how much weight we assign that scientifically rather than just aesthically. The classic dilemma is the "paper or “plastic” question in the supermarket. The debate goes both ways but paper bags are certainly more expensive and more material intensive than plastic bags. They can both be recycled in terms of the consumer reusing them with that edge usually going to the plastic bags (garbage can liners among other things). Paper can be recycled in theory but the theory and the real-world outcome are complex.
It’s my personal opinion that the biodegradable push has actually done more harm than good for the garbage-reduction and recycling movements. It makes people feel their garbage is “okay.” To some extent, the whole “biodegradable” concept is about appeasement rather than actually addressing the issue. It makes the public feel better about throwing away that wrapper because, hey, it will degrade away into nothingness.
Now, when it comes to* litter,* the biodegradable aspect is laudable, but in a landfill, even banana peels don’t biodegrade. (Cite: the book I mentioned in my previous post.)
Once garbage gets packed together, it creates an anaerobic envioronment which is not good for the decomposition process. Some decomposition occurs, of course, but the low oxygen environment keeps most items remarkably intact. In fact, the book mentions a archaeological dig at a site in Italy (I believe) in which the project had to halt for a while because the diggers were so sickened by the stench coming off of the ancient landfill.
More than most people realize. Consider only throwing away those parts of your meal’s packaging which are not recyclable. If you get a hamburger in a cardboard box and there is not a bunch of condiments/sauce/grease all over the box, consider wiping it out with a napkin and then breaking it down and taking it home to recycle. People look at me weird for carrying my recyclables out of a fast food place, but those of us in the US have a very long road to travel to get to carbon neutral and I feel some social weirdness is an acceptable price to pay to get further towards that goal. At very least break down and fold flat all items you are placing in the trash. This keeps the trash cans from filling up as fast with mostly empty space.
Recycle is the third “r” in the three r’s mantra of “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” because it is the least preferable of the three. If you regularly eat salads at fast food places, consider getting your own place setting to keep in the car, perhaps in a draw-string bag, you can take in with you. Stainless steel can be washed in the resturant bathroom after your meal and will take just a few seconds, or you can wrap it in a napkin to take it home and put it in the dishwasher and re-fill your bag with a clean set from the drawer. This re-use of durable silverware reduces your need for disposable silverware(often made of non-recyclable plastics). If you take the food back to the office, just set the recyclable trash aside so you can take it home at the end of the day. Most fast food boxes, from fries to fish, are made of paperboard or corrugated cardboard and are recyclable in many areas.
Vote with your wallet. Investigate which resturaunts in your area support environmentally friendly initiatives(everything from using recycled materials to automatic faucets/toilets in the bathrooms). Patronize those over less environmentally conscious resturaunts. If a shop which orders their take-out bags from a factory which makes paper bags with post-consumer(recycled) paper makes more orders the factory’s demands for paper from municipal recycling programs will go up and the cities will see the programs are working. It’s a virtuous spiral which all revolves around you and your daily choices. If you bring your own silverware they will reduce their orders for plastic silverware, which is often non-recyclable and uses non-renewable resources to make.
Think globablly, act locally. It’s one of the wisest buzz-phrases I’ve ever heard.
About fifteen years ago, I saw a news report on Nick News (on the children’s cable television channel Nickelodeon) about a family of four that was obsessive about reducing its garbage, to the point that they produced one garbage bag of trash a year. They were careful about what they purchased and composted when possible (even cardboard packaging as I remember).
To this I would add:* tell *the resturant/shop why you’re giving them more of your business. Write them a brief note or give the owner a call to let them know that their recycling efforts are specifically what drew you to their business. They need the encouragement.
There are lots of things you can do yourself…just set a goal (say, 1/2 garbage can full every week). First, cut out the fast food and try to eat only foods that have little packaging. Bring them with you in reusable containers. If you’re female, use a diva cup or cloth for your period. Use towels instead of paper. Instead of buying cleaners in plastic containers over and over again, buy one plastic container and make your own cleaner (with vinegar and water). If you have a baby, use cloth diapers & wipes. Bring your own cloth bags when you shop. Buy toys that have very little or no packaging and no batteries. I could go on and on. Be creative.
Another thing you can do: ask your employer if you can set up a small recycling program.
My boss brought in a couple of plastic totes and designated one for cans and one for paper. (He also put a bin by the copy machine, which was a smart move because that’s where most of our waste paper is generated.)
It’s been well recieved. People actually go out of their way to drop their soda cans into the bin rather than the trash, and I’ve seen several employees put boxes under their desk to collect waste paper to take to the tote all at once.
Once a week, he packs the filled totes into his car and drives them to the recycling center. I don’t know if he gets paid for the aluminum or not, but you could suggest that if you do get paid that the money go into an office kitty to buy something the employees want or pay for a little party at the end of the year.
I take three big canvas tote bags to the supermarket to use instead of “paper or plastic.” I don’t know if I save a tree a year, but if every tenth customer did it, we’d save a lot of packaging. When you’re just buying one or two things at the drugstore, say, “No bag, please.”
If you often eat at the kind of fast food place where your food isn’t packaged until you order it, you can take your own tupperoid things in, and say, “No packaging please, put it in these.” However, if you watch them dump your fries out of a paper sleeve into your container, and they take your sandwich out of a box to put it in your plastic thing, you’re not saving anything.
The canvas bags are a royal pain. They get dirty in the trunk, don’t hold enough, and shrink to nothing when washed. What’s wrong with just bringing back the plastic bags they gave you last time? You probably have them accumulating in a ball in some cupboard anyway. When San Francisco wanted to tax the plastic bags there was an uproar for many months, but I never hear a single commentator mention that they were reusable.
A lot of people seemed to be preoccupied with landfills in the 70’s and early 80’s so it’s not that you’re alone it’s just that you’re a little late. I don’t think people are worried about it all that much these days because there is plenty of room to throw our stuff away.
My canvas bags each hold as much as two paper grocery bags. I guess my trunk is cleaner than yours. I’ve been using these big totes for years, and I haven’t had to wash them yet. When I do get plastic bags (for meat and frozen foods,) I recycle them. They’re usually holed after one use, anyway. They’re number 2 plastic.
I don’t like the plastic bags. They don’t stand up, as a paper bag would, so before I get home, I have groceries all over the floor. :smack:
I agree. The problem is that it’s becoming more and more expensive to do so since when the landfills fill up the new ones must be built away from civilization and it costs more to ship the garbage there. We are in no danger of running out of places to put it. We are running out of cheap places though.
I believe the increased costs of disposal will have the biggest impact on encouraging reducing and recycling. If it costs you 10 bucks to get rid of a bag of garbage you are more likely to make an honest effort to reduce. Right now, in most places it’s ‘free’ (included in your taxes), although that is changing.
Frankly, some of the recycling techniques mentioned here a laudable, but unrealistic. As long as landfill is relatively cheap, people won’t go to much effort to reduce. Later, when disposal costs are greater, they will.
I’ve never lived in a location where it was “free” I had to actually pay for it. For example in Little Rock I get a utility bill that includes water, sewage, and trash pickup. That’s not really a tax. When I lived outside the city I had to arrange for my garbage to be collected by a private company.
I think we’re a long away away from garbage costing 10 bucks a bag to get rid of.
There’s no solution? None of the things you’ve listed are ‘necessities,’ or have even been a significant part of our culture for more than a generation. Surely we are not at the mercy of the increased packaging and minimal cleaning needs of the universe?