Dreams to Garbage

 

A.I. Generated Artwork

I woke up to the sound of what sounded like a garbage truck rumbling down the road and realized that I had forgotten to take out the garbage the night before. Nothing gets the body more alert in a faster manner. I jumped out of bed, threw on the sweats and raced outside to drag my half empty can out to the curb in a pouring rain, the first I've seen in three or four months. Fortunately, there was no garbage truck in sight and my neighbor's trash can across the street was still unemptied which means the truck hasn't come yet. Normally it comes in mid to late morning, well after I am up and about. But on the days I forget to set mine out, it inevitably comes at 4:30 in the morning... without fail. Now that I have mine out, it probably won't come to nearly noon.

Garbage in my neck of the woods, and I suspect elsewhere, is becoming a problem. I'm not much of a consumer so we typically don't have much garbage. I set it out weekly though because it I don't want to have problems with raccoons or other animals getting into it as I see happen elsewhere around town on my drives on pickup day. Others have their cans completely filled to overflowing and have purchased other bags with special tags and have those filled and stacked alongside the trashcan. It is quite appalling at how much trash is generated. 

When we drive to the urban jungle, the road from my life to it leads us past the landfill for the county it resides in. When I was a child, it was just a flat stretch of ground with a giant hole dug into it where they dumped the garbage and bury it. By my teens and early 20's, it had grown to a small hill. These days, it is now nearing the mountain size classification, at least by Iowa standards, and stretches off into the far distance. I no longer see any machines on it as they are off on the back side out of sight but if I could, they would be specks that I must squint to identify. 

I blame it on two things mostly, consumerism and packaging. Shopping at places like Walmart and others, has conditioned us to want everything for the cheapest price which not surprisingly means the cheapest made. We go through things at an alarming rate and then just toss them in the trash. Packaging is also an issue as everything comes wrapped in plastic and nestled in Styrofoam. My wife got a Pilates exercise machine for Christmas this year and it was unbelievable how much Styrofoam and plastic were necessary to get that to my front door. With patience and time, I was able to fit in in the remaining half of my garbage can not normally occupied but had I been like the Jones family down the street, I would have had to buy two or three tagged city bags and stacked them along side the can. 

When does this all end? After we meet the same fate of Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout?