Saturday, February 25, 2006

Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Piles Up

Aaargh!! Again I forget to put the garbage out. We've recently moved to a new city and I'm still trying to get used to a different trash day. This would be the third week in a row that I've forgotten to put our garbage out in the morning. (Yes I could put it out the night before, but I'm anal about the whole identity theft thing).

So I now stare into a garage with 14 white trash bags haphazardly piled up in the corner. Sigh.

Hmmm... 14 trash bags over the course of three weeks - thats a little over 4 trash bags a week for a family of four (two adults, two small children). Considering the wasteful nature that is the American way, that's probably not too bad, but let's do a little math here.

I live in a city of approximately 85,000 people. Ok, I know many of you will roll your eyes and say 85,000 is no city, but for lack of a better word let's just say city (town just doesn't seem to work for 85,000 either). Anyway, assuming the average household is composed of three people (hold your criticism, this is just a little exercise here), then there's roughly 28,333 households here. If each household puts out four bags of trash a week that's 133,332 bags of trash per week for only 85,000 people - all going to our local landfill.

If that doesn't make you stop and think at least just a little about the disproportionate affect Americans have on the environment in terms of the consumption of resources and the amount of waste we discard, then I don't know what will.

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