Getting rid of garbage used to be easy. You took it out your back door and a decent distance from your domicile and threw it in the nearest ravine-out of sight, out of mind, problem solved (unless the smell of the deed returned to the house). As population densities increased and trash accumulated in urban areas it became more practical and sanitary to have trash collected and taken to a community “dump.”
Now not even the community dump is adequate and landfill space is filling up so we are being forced to consider alternatives for disposing the leftovers of our extravagant lifestyles
We don't have a single way to dispose of trash, garbage and junk the way our grandfathers did. We have different definitions for dumps or different types, reflecting the menu of castoffs each type will prepare for digestion. There are solid waste dumps, hazardous waste dumps, sludge dump farms from sewage treatment facilities, and construction debris dumps.
The community where I once worked, New Haven, Indiana, has just about every type dump known plus a whole slew of closed landfills with “only God knows what's there” contents. New Haven happens to be located about six miles east of downtown Fort Wayne. Over the years the lowlands along the Maumee River between the two cities became a kind of "no mans land" where most of the metropolitan area's garbage and other stuff, including industrial waste, was dumped without a care for the future or where the stuff might leak and end up. One dump spot was an EPA "Super Fund" clean-up site; there are others yet unclaimed.
Not in my backyard? What if every household had to take care of its own wastes? I submit to you we have been too easy on ourselves. We allow costs of waste and pollution to be externalized and pretend they don't exist. We do the same with our federal budget by taking significant costs off the books. We pretend these costs don't exist. How can we balance a budget without including all the costs? How can we continue practicing an economic theory that fails to account for all the costs pollution and waste represent?
The rise of civilization brought with it a general degrading of our environment. Thus far we have been able to avoid solving the environmental problem and keep moving on to a new place. We are comfortable eating three spoons full of dirt a day (the amount each of us inhales from the air we breathe).
I come from an old school of thought that says you are responsible for the problems you create and solving them is your job. The time has come to rethink how we dispose of waste. It's time your backyard and mine should become the next landfill. No, I have not taken leave of my senses. “Not in my backyard” is an often heard phrase when pollution of one kind or another is heard, but “Not in my backyard” does not accomplish anything more than moving the pollution problem under consideration from one place to another. We don't care where pollution and waste problems go so long as we can convince ourselves we are safely removed from them. The attitude is selfish, nearsighted, does not solve the problem and is no better than the polluters who create the wastes.
I submit to you it would be far wiser for each household to be required to take care of the disposal, storage and recycling of its own waste, but not in the same manner our grandfathers and grandmothers did.
The only way we will ever get a handle on the waste and pollution problems our “civilized” society generates is to return responsibility and control to the people. We need to give everybody part of the problem. We need a landfill in every backyard, able to correctly handle and store not just the usual household waste, but also the household hazardous wastes now blindly tossed in the regular garbage pick up.
Under the present system of waste management, very little is recycled and a lot of ugly things turn up in sanitary landfills that belong in more secure holding systems (lead, mercury, other heavy metals, paint, cleaners, gasoline, etc.). We Americans make it easy for costs associated with waste and pollution or the health problems generated by waste and pollution to be ignored as a part of our economic view. We pretend these problems don't exist. The costs of pollution and waste are said to be "externalized" (that means paid for by you and me and our children).
There is nothing new to this attitude. Eight thousand years ago our ancestors gave up their "hunter/gatherer" lifestyle and began building more permanent communities based on agriculture, more personalized forms of ownership and war. The new agriculture was based on the “slash and burn” technique of using fire to clear land for planting. Soil used in this way soon lost its fertility so it was necessary to keep moving plantings to new locations. Employing this method man did not have to worry about what happened to worn out ground, he merely moved to a new parcel. The Earth's resources, in his way of seeing, were unlimited.
As civilizations developed and soil fertility near urban centers declined, the loss was easily covered by shipping more food and other needed materials from the periphery. As growth continued, what began as a local problem of soil infertility and erosion became, through deforestation and reckless land use, a change in climate over large regions. Still, as some lands died new areas were available to be exploited and men moved on to take advantage of “new opportunities.”
Today our civilization and culture has become what late historian Christopher Lasch characterized as a "culture of addiction." Our addiction is our need and desire to consume. Like any addict we are not concerned "what" or "whom" must be paid tomorrow as long as we can get our "fix" today. So we consume materials, energy and resources disguised as Whopper's, gas-guzzling, pollution belching SUVs and other trucks, and Las Vegas glitter and pleasure without regard to the terrible hangover and withdrawal pangs we must face later.
We have the same attitude toward the creation of an annual budget for the federal government where a large chunk of the money we must spend does not appear on the books. If we ever get a balanced budget amendment, how will we know if we are being told the truth if a third or a half the money to be spent does not appear?
If we have learned any lesson by now from previous centuries it is we cannot solve any problem by simply abdicating responsibility for it to a higher authority, whether it is the federal government in Washington, our state governments or to a big trash hauler promising to take away the inconveniences of our unhealthy lifestyles.
The slogan on one Earth Day poster hanging in the local library read “Think Globally, Act Locally,” It's time to open the landfill in the backyard and start taking care of the messes we individually create. I have a feeling if we do; we are going to see a lot of converts to recycling and more reusable products and containers. I think we may also see dramatic decrease in the number of household hazardous materials sold or consumed.
