Scales of trash

It is wonderful to be constantly challenged and provoked by thoughtful people around you. Melissa is one such person that challenges me, and makes me think more about what I do. A couple of days ago, I raised the issue of becoming a social outcast/recluse if you did not generate trash. Melissa had a wonderful comment on this, which she thought of while having a coffee at Intelligentsia in Chicago -

"How do you account/control for trash generated by dining out or even getting a cup of coffee in a mug? Every business we patronize creates trash directly, meaning we are creating trash indirectly by even buying things like food and drinks. This gets me back to my original contention that it's impossible to live 100 percent trash-free and not become a social outcast. And if you start thinking about the life cycle analysis of everything you consume (even bulk food products), the equation gets even tougher."

Trash has so many dimensions, and it is generated at so many levels. Is trash a natural outcome of our society? Thermodynamically, it is likely. The flow of materials in our society on average, based on current social structures, takes into account only the extraction through throw away stages of the life of the material. In general, society does not care about what happens to the materials once they are thrown away. Yet unless all of the energy or mass stored in the material is fully consumed and reduced to heat, there will remain degraded forms of these materials in the form of matter. Regardless, in the end, trash generation increases entropy - i.e. it is a degradation of natural resources and nice, well contained forms of energy and raw materials. Further, we are constantly synthesizing and converting natural raw materials into forms that don't necessarily exist in nature (apart from all natural wood, water, gems, foods untreated with artificial pesticides, etc...Can you think of more?). Yet, generating say one plastic bag of trash is not as bad as generating two, or a million. Nature may (and does) have ways of dynamically responding to these forcings...

These incoherent thoughts lead me to some issues that I think I would like to elaborate on in future posts...

1) the view that nature exists "out there," and that we are somehow separate from it, and that we can somehow remove from our circles these degraded materials and assume that they won't affect us...
2) trash and the commons problem...
3) trash and its scales and dimensions - time, location, and amount (thanks Meg and Tim)...
4) trash and its potential inevitability...

---------------------
Jennifer's sister-in-law Monica had a recent post (28 April) on her blog about how the reduced impact of her saving two plastic bags was instantaneously undone by the man behind her while checking out at a grocery store. Monica expressed her dismay - will we ever get enough people starting to do little things that will lead to bigger things? Who knows. Yet, my mother attested to me today that tides are changing in Bloomsburg, PA, where the cashier will no longer think you are a lunatic for having brought your own bag. So I guess that is a step in the right direction.

---------------------
In my accounting of trash from the first month, I neglected to recount (and account for trash generated by me) an episode that Jennifer and I had at the Motor City Casino during her last visit to the great State of Michigan. I had won a pass to the Best of Detroit Party thrown by the Metrotimes. Jennifer and I had also gone to this party last year, and it was wonderful. The food was great, and there was an open bar for both desserts and drinks. Yet, we both recalled the amount of trash that we generated. So, in preparation, we took our own silverware (and now I regret not having taken my own plate, and cup). Our beer was served to us in these really nice thick plastic cups, and our food was served in paper. Jennifer and I used one paper plate each, and one cup each. We were wholly intending on saving my one plate and cup and bringing it home. We had to guard it with our lives. As soon as you were done with your food, someone would come by and whisk away your trash, and so people would constantly get new plates. Jennifer and I valiantly guarded our plates, but when we were both looking away and talking to a friend there, the plate was taken. On our way out, I was told that I could not take the cup out because the name of the casino was on it, and they didn't want to be responsible for irresponsible people drinking out of that cup post-party. Basically, I did not account for one paper plate and one plastic cup. Thank you to Jennifer for pointing out this egregious oversight.

On a similar note, when Marco, Anna, Jennifer and I went to Neehee's in Canton, I took a stack of glass plates and told them to prepare the food on these plates (because I knew that they served in paper). They did, gladly.