garbage

Some other thoughts

Yesterday I was thinking how nice the view was - there was (for Guatemala) very little garbage on the road - maybe the equivalent of the US and then out in the middle of nowhere there was (and it was visible for miles) a dump. Its as if someone said we'll dump here down this mountain side - gravity will take most of it away. It was clearly the dump of a small community. My thought was god is that ugly - why would they dump there. and then I started thinking about our garbage. Its not visible so we don't think about it - even when I go to the dump I don't see the garbage - it just goes in huge dumpster and gets hauled away. We are more sophisticated in our garbage disposable, but we generate an obscene amount of garbage. How much waste is generated to buy a SD card? The packaging that we use is ridiculous (I understand that small items have a ton of packaging to stop theft) - who are we to make comments about Guatemalan garbage? and yet gringos constantly are making comments - sure its ugly, but they are generating alot less than us. What can we do? Recycling is a start, but is that just a feel good thing? It makes no sense to throw an aluminum can in the ground - hell people will pay you for the can so it has value not to mention there is not an infinite supply of aluminum oxide (or whatever they mine) but how about my bottle of beer? If I recycle it how much energy is expanded before it becomes part of a product again? Is it better to dump it - is the final cost to earth greater in the recyling or in the dumping - why don't I know these things. And then why now do we not have reusable bottles? Obviously for the beer companies its cheaper to produce disposable bottles but as far as the cost to earth - what is more expensive. In a handful of states you have deposits on the bottles so they are returned to the store, why not reuse them. When i was young I remember (albeit very vaguely) the milk man coming to the house and If I remember milk was delivered in non disposable bottles - those days are gone (and I don't drink milk anyway). I can (and do) buy beer in my growler, but there is only one place in Manitowoc that I can do that at, and they don't always have the beer that I like enough to take home. and back to my SD card (boy am I rambling) why is it that when we buy a product online it comes with the same ridiculous packaging? Online shopping is becoming the future of shopping - why not change the packaging - the online stores deal in such huge bulk that it would make much more sense to due away with the packaging. I'm going to see what I can do to stop generating garbage (as I have a plastic bottle of water in front of me) - no more 'to go' cups of coffee in Styrofoam.

If I want to be more environmentally conscious where do I draw the line? Trying to buy products in less packaging sounds good - even easy, but what takes more energy and makes more waste - buying a can of tomatoes or fresh tomatoes out of season? How much energy is used to can a can of tomatoes and ship them vs shipping from wherever and keeping them 'fresh'. I can't help but think that its more 'environmentally friendly' to buy the canned tomatoes - I guess I am thinking too much.

later