Mission One: Garbage
The week before Christmas, our community’s sanitation company went on strike. The Home Owner’s Association sent a notice permitting residents to leave trash buckets on the curb and fill them up as needed. In less than a week the garbage cans were overflowing.
The HOA then stationed a long massive dumpster at the community clubhouse as an alternate dumping site. Within another week that dumpster was over flowing.
While the big dumpster gave my sons and I another barrier in our games of hide-and-seek, it also was a stark reminder of how much people consume, then discard.
One side of the dumpster had doors so people could simply walk their trash up into the container. We peeked in and saw the holiday aftermath. Bags of trash, old appliances, cardboard boxes—all the parts of people’s lives they want nothing to do with.
As we were peering into this abyss, a resident drove up with their pick-up truck FULL to its brim ready to dump.
How much trash do people produce in a week’s time? Certainly more during the holidays. But the question keeps haunting me. Why are we such trashy people?
It’s simple. We are addicted to things. We go to the stores, sometimes every day, and we bring home more stuff.
This stuff makes us feel good for just a short period of time, then in a day or two, we forget about it, and put it out of sight, where it sits until we are done done with it Then it goes in the garbage.
It’s all just one big trashy cycle. So how do we end it? We must really ask ourselves if we need that thing.
I’ve been teaching my sons to truly consider whether they need something. I encourage them to think of the what that thing will leave behind. Can we recycle it? Can we reuse it? Can we donate it to someone who might need it?
With the holidays in the rearview, we are re-upping our contract to:
• Buy less
• Eschew single-use plastic where we can help it
• Bring our own utensils and containers
• Buy paper or cardboard containers
• Turn off the water
It all means something when we all do it.
The small acts pay off in big ways.
And besides, we have it all already. The questions is, do we need it all?
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Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
