1.Exhibits collection garbage.
If your habits resemble those of average Americans,you generate about 4.6 pounds of solid trash per day.This adds up to big trouble for the environment.Americans are generating waste products faster than nature can break them down and using up resources faster than they can be replaced.
How can we find ways to meet our current economic and social needs without compromising the ability of our children,and our children's children,to do the same?Our success will depend on understanding the difference between
Sustainable practices:practices that provide ongoing economic and social benefits without degrading the environment.
Unsustainable practices:"quick fixes" that fill an immediate need for resources.Over time,however,these practices deplete or damage natural resources so they cannot be used or enjoyed by future generations.
2.
There is nothing more disgusting than garbage that doesn’t know its place.That’s one reason it’s garbage in the first place.It is something we are done with,that no longer belongs near us.It must be removed,taken away.Otherwise it contaminates,disgusts.The anthropologist Mary Douglas suggested that the very definition of dirt was “matter out of place”:a hair on one’s head is one thing,a hair in a glass of water is another.A half-eaten plate of food is a savored delicacy in one context,a mound of waste in another.
Maybe there’s also something profound to be discerned in how we look at garbage.If a fortune-teller can read the future in soggy tea leaves,what might be discovered if we look carefully at milk cartons and used paper towels,cooking grease and moldy bread?There is much to understand about garbage,and a reluctance,because of its very nature,to look too closely.
