What if everyone had to distribute all the trash they create on the grounds of their property? No, you cannot bury it. No, you cannot pay someone to take it away. Yes, you have to scatter it around your home’s foundation and, yes, you can clear through it a walking path.
There is an old saying that goes “out of sight out of mind.” If you can’t see it, it doesn’t bother you. If you went to Africa and witnessed the starving drought-stricken people of Botswana you would be troubled and maybe even inspired to help. Yet sitting a couple thousand miles away you barely even think about it even though you know it’s happening…“out of sight out of mind.” This is an analogy for our environmental catastrophe. Mother earth cannot biodegrade and replenish at the rate we are creating waste and consuming. The harm of city dumps is that when we throw our things away, they’re out of sight and out of mind – regardless of if it’s good or not.
We are also creating waste that is arguably not even biodegradable because producers and buyers are either too ignorant, lazy, greedy, afraid, or all the above to care. Just like the ostrich with its head in the sand believing it is safe because it can’t see the enemy, we believe we are safe and our mother is healthy because we cannot see the toxic mess we are producing that is being hidden away in landfills, city dumps or the ocean. Are landfills helping the cause by hiding the by-product of our gluttony and material addiction and capitalistic consumer-oriented culture? At the same time producing millions upon millions of completely toxic, permanently destroyed areas throughout our planet which release toxic gasses and pollute our groundwater. Crazily you will hear almost no mention of our landfill epidemic. Remember “out of sight out of mind.” Which one of you wants the city dump in your neighborhood? Which one of you wants it even in your community? It’s disgusting! It’s toxic! It’s dangerous!
I say we should get rid of all garbage cans and all garbage collectors (don’t worry, we will find you another job) and we should all throw our trash on the ground. How nice would that be? Then we would know what we are doing and many of us would think twice before doing it. Many of us would put our creativity to use and focus on biodegradable products. Products that would literally vanish in a month or two, same as the leaves that fall from a tree.
We would start recycling more seriously but mostly we would become AWARE! The harm of utilizing city dumps is the fact that we become UNAWARE. We need to be aware of the toxic mess we are making and we would deal with it. We would have to deal with it! With the creativity and ingenuity of the American spirit, we would make almost 100% of all our products biodegradable, instead of hiding our toxic ignorance away like an unseen enemy waiting to strike. This stuff is gonna come back and haunt us and many many generations that follow us! Like global warming has inspired the electric vehicle, the harm these dumps do to our planet will inspire the biodegradable movement. But do we have to wait for the tragedy before we take action? Global warming, deforestation, toxic dumps, oceanic plastic, over-fishing. Are we that stupid we can’t see what is coming? 100% of our sustenance comes from mother earth. Everything we do should be done with her benefit in mind even if it’s inconvienient. Does anyone want to start a biodegradable amazon.com??? Sorry everyone, I just need to put that out there.