UnderwoodTrashedTheStoryofGarbageAmericanStyle

Trashed: The Story of Garbage, American Style

Honestly, I think this film could have been a lot better. To me, the first half seemed like a messy attempt at an introduction, without really introducing much. The second half, however, really got down to it, was more focused, and far more informative. The film I’m talking about of course is Trashed: the Story of Garbage, American Style, directed by Bill Kirkos and released in 2007.

The film draws out the problems associated with our trash. Basically, we are far over consumptive and are throwing way too much away. There are 10,000 landfills in the U.S., and Americans throw away enough stuff to fill the Empire State Building every week. That’s a lot of garbage. Besides just being a space issue, there are a lot of other problems associated with landfills. One is that landfills are only designed to last 30 to 40 years. After that time period, we don’t really know what to do with them. Even after landfills are completely full, buried with dirt and closed, they still have to be managed for decades. And every landfill will leak. No matter how good of a liner they have, they will eventually leak. This causes problems with water, because the leachate that comes from the landfills will either seep into the groundwater, or will run off into streams and lakes and get into the water system that way. We don’t want this stuff in our water system, because a lot of it is dangerous to our health. Another problem with landfills is that they are a major contributer of methane gas to the atmosphere. As all the stuff in landfills breaks down and decays, it gives off huge quantities of methane. This methane goes into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming (the EPA has actually established a link between global climate change and solid waste management, and has shown that waste reduction and recycling can slow climate change). This methane can be a huge opportunity for energy, and could be an alternative to oil, but sadly, of the 10,000 landfills in the U.S., only 300 use methane capture technology.

Why have landfills grown to such huge proportions? During World War II, the U.S. placed a huge emphasis on recycling, only consuming what you needed, and fixing what you had. And during the war, businesses made lots of money producing war goods for our troops. After the war was over though, they needed to find a new consumer for all the goods they could produce to keep their profits up. This is when things like plastic forks and Styrofoam plates came around, things that the consumer would throw away after one use. This provided enough demand for goods to keep the businesses producing as much as they were during the war. This also provided the start of our throw away society. We now have a mindset where we want the newest, best things available, and not old stuff, because old stuff is outdated and somehow bad. This leads to a lot of things being thrown away. But why are these things thrown away and not recycled? Simply put, there is more economic incentive to throw things away than to recycle them. Landfills are a profit-making enterprise, taking in $43 billion annually in the U.S. Recycling, on the other hand, does not have a money incentive. The way the system is set up, you can’t make money by recycling. This is because many landfills are privately owned, while recycling usually falls to the responsibility of the government.

Now what can we do about this? Quite a lot, actually. The first thing is to think about what you put in the trash can. ([]) What can be re-used, or recycled? What can be composted (compostable material actually makes up about 50% of our trash)? What can you sell to someone else so that they can use it? After taking all those things out, you’ll be left with a lot less to put in a landfill. Still have stuff left? Try places like CHaRM—a Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials in Boulder, Colorado ([]). There may be a place like this near you, you just have to look. Another thing to do is not to buy new things. A lot of things like porcelain, doors, and hardware can be re-used, and there are stores out there that make this possible. Try finding one of those instead of going out and buying a brand new toilet. You can also vote with your dollars. Buy from companies that take back their products after they’re outdated, ones that use less packaging, or have a sustainable initiative. When something you have breaks, try to find someone to fix it instead of throwing it out and buying a replacement. (For example, you can find a local cobbler through the Shoe Service Institute of America at [])

There are also many options on a larger scale. One of these would be a nationwide program to set up a carbon capture system on all the landfills in the U.S. instead of just a tiny fraction of them. Another would be to make businesses have to be responsible for their products at the end of their useful life. An example of this would be if an electronics company had to set up a dismantling station for their products, where the valuable materials could be extracted and reused, and the rest recycled. Another thing would be to start composting and recycling programs that go right along with our trash programs, so that everyone has access to them. And finally, we could change the system altogether. Landfills are a very primitive solution to garbage, if we could come up with new technology it might make garbage less of a problem. We could change the way we train our waste managers, instead of teaching them what we already do, which has a lot of problems, we could train them about the problems, and push them to be innovative with their solutions.