Policing the Garbage

My hometown is debating passing a law which would require citizens to put their garbage out in clear plastic bags. This is so recyclable garbage can easily be seen where as now it can be hidden inside the black plastic bags.

Many years ago, before the black plastic garbage bag was invented, we put our household trash out in large tin trash cans. That must have been terribly messy for the garbage collectors so the advent of plastic bags must have seemed like a godsend to them.

Now it seems as though they want to pick up as little trash as possible...to the point where we might not even need them anymore. Once you do all the recycling and throw your veggie peelings into the composter, what's left?

Recycling makes a lot of sense. We are a terribly wasteful society who are polluting our planet at a frightening rate so we've got to take stock of ourselves and do better.

One place to start is at the grocery store. We buy a bag of cereal in a huge box that is only half filled with cereal. They do this to make us believe we're getting more for our money. It's a waste of paper product (and plastic) and just adds to the landfill in the end. Most of the products we buy come in oversized boxes. Silly, isn't it?

Anyone thinking that we can solve the problem of too much plastic in our landfill is wrong, though. Almost everything we own has an element of plastic in it and it will all end up at the dump some time in the future.

We're burying ourselves in plastic and it ain't all garbage bags, honey!