On our way home from Ohio we were driving through a beautiful part of Kentucky. Mountains on either side and the trees were beautiful making the drive rather pleasant (despite the ignorant truckers, slower-than-us-left-lane-traffic and cranky kids).
John then makes a comment about a particular hill on the left...
"I think that's a landfill," he says casually.
"Where? That? No..." I say in my usual confused & skeptical tone
"Yah, I think it is. And I think that one is too."
I still wasn't buying it... but the eyes don't lie. There they were, lined up, about 4 of them. Garbage trucks! Just waiting to get into this "beautiful" landfill. The parts you could see from the Interstate were covered in grass and made it look like a small mountain. I was instantly struck with overwhelming anxiety. I now knew what it was like for all those recycling nazis like my mother in law, that recycles everything and tries to get me to do it too. I was sick to my stomach thinking about how much garbage was underneath that lush grass and all that garbage those trucks were about to dump there.
I don't know how I'm going to do it but I'm going to take some major steps to reducing the amount of waste this house sends to the landfills every Monday. I can't guarantee that I won't be throwing away diapers that will rot for millions of years but I can start somewhere... recycling my newspaper, plastic bags and egg cartons should be easy enough. No more lunch bags... only reusable in this house. I have a few cloth diapers but not enough to get me through a day for the two still in them. I have reusable bags that I need to start using more often. Maybe if everyone thought that they could make a difference then a difference may come to be. I know I never really thought about what I did as affecting the world as a whole, but we need to be the change that we want to see. I don't litter because it affects the earth, and just looks gross, so why would I think it was any better to let that candy wrapper end up in a landfill somewhere...
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3 comments:
Yep its crazy the amount of trash we use a Country - just think that landfill was only for that part of KY - there are TONS of those in each state. It's insane - thats why we have started to take our recycling to the center on post. Stupid Savannah doesn't have curbside recycling - they should and more people would do it. Good for you - baby steps are still steps - thats what I say anyway!
Check this out. It's an article a friend of mine posted yesterday on landfills--interesting.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/g-word/david-wasteland-landfill.html
Also, check out EnviroMom.com. They did a waste reduction challenge a while back and had some good room by room posts on how to cut down garbage output.
Oh, and would you please give a shout out to all the spunky Moms for me. Tell em I said HI--I'm never on BBC anymore :( Looks like ya'll had a blast!
I still lurk every so often, but wanted commend you on your efforts with 5 little ones! I hope I can do the same as my family grows. My town doesn't have a recycling program either which makes absolutely no sense.
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