Paul's Ponderings - April 10, 2008

The annual PRIDE Spring Clean-up is now underway in our community. The City of Columbia is having free tipping of trash and metal goods through Friday at the fairgrounds for city residents, and the county will be kicking off its cleanup with a roadside cleanup this Saturday and free tipping at dumpsters that will be placed at various locations throughout the county next Friday and Saturday, plus free tipping at the transfer station next Saturday.
With all this going on and people focused a little more on cleaning up things, I thought this would be as good as time as any to devote this column to matters such as keeping our environment as clean as possible and the importance of doing such things as recycling all the things we can.
In years gone by, I never gave much thought to how much garbage I personally generated, nor did I really care about recycling things that I could. To me, garbage was garbage, it all went in the trashcan and was hauled away to be buried somewhere in a landfill. Like a lot of folks, I never considered how many of our natural resources – many of them non-renewable –that went into making the items I threw away when I was finished with them. Thankfully, as I’ve grown older (and possibly a little wiser) I’ve become quite a bit more concerned about our environment, our natural resources, where all of our garbage goes, etc.
According to the National Geographic, in 2006, we Americans alone generated 251 million tons of trash – that’s 502 billion (502,000,000,000) pounds. Each individual in the United States generates 4.6 pounds of trash each and every day of the year. Talk about a mind-boggling amount.
Where does all this trash go? Again, according to National Geographic, roughly 55 percent of it goes to landfills, 33 percent is recycled, and 12.5 percent is incinerated. These figures apparently don’t include the significant amount that is thrown out along side of our roads or dumped over hillsides or in creeks or in other out-of-sight, out-of-mind places. And, one must keep in mind that the 55 percent of our trash that winds up in landfills will be there for an eternity. After being compacted and buried under tons of earth, the trash for the most part will remained unchanged for many, many years. I guess that means that someone a couple of centuries down the road could dig and find out what we had for supper on a particular night.
As I stated earlier, I have become more aware of the environment, and have gradually increased the materials I recycle. I’ve recycled newspapers for years (because all I have to do is bring them to work and put them in the baler), along with glass jars and plastic containers. Rather belatedly, I’ve started recycling aluminum cans, (I didn’t in the past, using the excuse that I didn’t have room in my kitchen for another container) and other aluminum products. But, I know that there’s a lot more that I can do if I will just put forth a little more effort. However, I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the point that my sister, Susan, has. She recycles just about everything.
If you’re interested in recycling, you can go to  www.obviously.com/recycle/ to learn a lot, and find the world’s shortest comprehensive recycling guide.
Speaking of National Geographic one last time, they’ve been advertising a show that will be coming on their channel this Sunday night (8 p.m. CDT) called “The Human Footprint” which is supposed to show us “Everything you eat. Everything you drink. Everything you use. Your entire life’s consumption. In one place at one time.” It’s going to be interesting to watch.