There is something about poking through someone else's garbage that makes you feel dirty, and it's not just the stench and the flies. Scrap by scrap, we are reverse-engineering a grimy portrait of another human being, reconstituting an identity from his discards, probing into stuff that is absolutely, positively none of our damn business.
-- reporters investigating local officials' trash ... imagine if they listened to their phone calls, huh?
I first heard about Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail Of Trash by Elizabeth Royte because the author took part on the San Francisco (a recycling mecca of sorts) progressive call-in show, Your Call. The callers basically spent most of the time spelling out various ways one can recycle, but late in the show -- like she does late in the book -- we basically had a bit of a bait and switch. It turns out municipal waste (half home/half business) amounts to but two percent of the overall garbage in the country at large -- most of it comes from sources like industry, mining, and agriculture. The wasteful nature of animal husbandry, for instance, is one practical reason some put forth to temper if not totally replace our current factory farming industry.
["The Secret Trail" is also a bit much, though Royte did have some problems finding out what happened to the stuff ... New York types less open than some other regions turned out to be. I second her sentiment that this is counterproductive, since it makes taboo what should not be, suggests blame and deceit when ultimately the garbage came from us -- she only dealt with people who hauled the stuff away and so forth. But, this is far from unique to this subject; some things tend to make people nervous, and the net effect is counterproductive. Also, fittingly, the book came from a library in Staten Island -- the locale of a major landfill.]
Anyway, the overall effect really was "well, this is much ado about nothing much," and late in the book Royte has an expert sort of remind her of just that fact. This did hurt the overall flavor of the book to some large extent, though the author did try to temper it a bit ... mostly in passing. For instance, how we handle our domestic trash says something about how we treat our overall environment overall. I agree with this philosophy -- it partly inspires my vegetarianism, which surely is not a major threat to the meat industry, but is part of my attempt to live a moral life.* It is not the only thing, but it is part of my overall moral philosophy. And, it does seem to be of some value. Be moral the way you can, and it can have a ripple effect.
The book itself still was interesting. First, it had a down to earth point of view -- it was basically a sort of journey by a regular sort (mom/urban dweller) to find out what happened to our trash. And, this is one of those things that many people are curious to find out about, even if they rather read an article instead of a book on the topic. Thus, we read about sanitation, recycling, landfills, and so forth. The overall message is that we as a nation need to change our way of doing things. Basically, realize that recycling is much less harmful than extracting the raw materials, and also that we are not the real problem. Yes, we consume too much etc., but the true target must be the producers, who hypocritically sponsor things like the famous crying Indian (really an Italian) ad. Sort of like those stop smoking ads put forth by Philip Morris (or their now non-descript sounding parent company).
And, as is often the case in such issues, other nations are far ahead of us on such matters. This includes the "precautionary principle" set forth by Western Europe. Again, even if ultimately we are the least of the problem trash-wise, focusing on the average citizen is important. Going back to that expert, many do want to help, which is why recycling is more popular than it sometimes is economically productive (environmental effects is quite a different matter ... it is not just about money). And, if we want to be shall we say non-ecological degenerates, we can demand industry and government be as well.
Just another reason to bring forth a sensical progressive path, which in no fashion is necessarily liberal. You can support low taxes or war in Iraq (though some social conservatives think God will take care of the environment, forgetting the idea was that we were given dominion with thought that we also would we good stewards of our bounty) as well as a country safe and pleasant to live in. Yeah, sometimes, it seems that it is an either/or thing. I look forward to the day when it will not be.
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* I repeat my annoyance at the petty addition of animal products in our food. I am not a purist here -- shrimp, for instance, is acceptable in my eyes. They probably do not feel pain and on the evolutionary food chain are below the insects that agricultural farming targets. So, I wanted to buy some ramen noodles with shrimp, a good snack food (lot of sodium, but health is not really my core reason for being a vegetarian, though it is a way to explain it in a way that makes you look like less of a goody two shoes). But, the damn thing had pork AND chicken byproducts. Probably for the sauce, but come on.