AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2006 > January > 23
Monday, January 23, 2006
We are what we throw away
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I will never be confused of hanging with the tree- hugging crowd, but I heard a factoid once that still stops me in my tracks.
One life form, if suddenly removed from planet Earth, would actually improve the place. That being man. As Pogo said: “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”
Get rid of rats and it sets off far-reaching environmental aftershocks. The same with roaches, marigolds, slugs, jellyfish, wombats, crab grass, etc.
The reason we’re so disposable is because we’re the only species that routinely takes/uses more than we need. Our capacity to create waste is enormous.
I’m reminded of this whenever I drive by Morgan Falls, which is now home to a church, youth sports fields and a dandy little golf course. When I was growing up, however, it was a landfill. The old-fashioned kind of landfill where you could bring dang near anything and drop it off.
Old paint (probably some with lead), chemicals, used motor oil, appliances, car batteries, kitchen waste, used kitty litter, car radiators and the like all found their eternal dirt nap at Morgan Falls way back in the day.
And this isn’t to point fingers. Way back when, we weren’t as aware of the long-term hazards of such materials. Back then it seemed a dandy idea — dump a ton of trash, bury it and build something groovy on top of it.
Now we know better. At our house we recycle, taking our plastics, glass and newspaper to the curb weekly. We also compost (thanks to the influence of the lovely and Earth-loving Mrs. Osterman) virtually all leftover food, which breaks down into good black dirt that gets used in her annual vegetable garden.
But we still, like most people, take more than we need. Several times per month food ends up composting because we didn’t eat it all. In a given week I never read the whole newspaper once, much less every day, but we get it daily. And I don’t think we’re the blight of Sandy Springs.
Walk around town and you’ll see half-finished sodas discarded. Used tires are tossed to the side of the road. Homeless people survive — some quite nicely — by eating perfectly good food from dumpsters.
So I wonder:
Why do we think we need so much?
Why do we so easily waste so much?
What will it take to change us?
And will we change in time, before we disappear from the planet, making life better for everything else living on this rock?
