Response to the article "Incinerators"

This article talks about all the reasons why incinerators are not a good idea. Not only does it destroy our environment, but it also harms our bodies and our food supply. They produce several toxic chemicals that are later revealed into the environment. They also produce ash that contains heavy metals and dioxins that release carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Incinerators also have the capability to impact on our climate changes. In some ways I agree with the fact that incinerators are a bad idea after reading all the negative effects it could cause, but the improved incinerators with filters discussed in the previous article I've read is not such a bad idea. If we make these machines filter out all the bad toxins before it could be able to be released into the air, will we still have a problem? I'm curious to find out. 

Garbology: Chapter 12

The last chapter of Garbology discussed about a woman named Bea Johnson and how she was able to change her ways after she realized the bad habits her and her family had gotten used too. It begins with a short anecdote about how her and her family had moved from a big house to a small apartment, and how all of the extra furniture were either tossed in the trash or thrown in storage. Just like Johnson's thoughts to think before she buys something changed after realizing her habits, reading this book did that for me. It made me realize all the things I did wrong and influenced me to buy less non-biodegradable items. 

In the last page of the chapter, Humes states Bea Johnson's ten ways to get started on a low-waste path. 

Garbology: Chapter 11

Chapter 11 of Garbology talks about Portland, Oregon. It discusses how Portland is one of the most greenest cities in America. They are so obsessed with staying green that bicycle lanes are found everywhere and even some businesses offer more parking for bikes than cars. I can't imagine a world like that, considering the fact that I've been living in a busy city like L.A. all my life. Although Portland has established an environmental friendly environment in their city, they lack the ability to keep the trash they throw to a minimum. They make a lot of trash. Humes states that they waste about 7.14 pounds a day per person. Portlanders had organized ways to use up their trash for composting or to generate electricity from the methane found in the trash. Due to the fact that getting energy from trash is unpopular in America, generating energy from trash will practically never happen. 

What I really liked most about this chapter is Nickolas Themelis's views on on our trash crisis. He says that the best plan that would get rid of this problem completely is the plan to change our cultural habits. If there's a change in the way people think, then we would be able to buy less non-biodegradable items, and companies will stop making less of those items. I feel that some day that change will come, but unfortunately it will be too late. It will come to a point where it will not only be a choice but something we have to do in order to not ruin our planet completely. We need to do something now. 

Garbology: Chapter 10

Chapter 10 discussed about a man named Andy Keller and how just one glance at a local dump changed his life completely. Keller talked about his experience and how there were some things that he was expecting to see and things that completely blew him away. He expected the dump to contain loads of trash that caused an unappealing stench. What he didn't expect was to see so much plastic bags. He defined it as something that you just can't miss. One visit changed his life. He got to thinking and had decided to start a company that manufactured reusable bags that he labeled as ChicoBags. By 2011, his company expanded. Keller also made school visits and demonstrated how much plastic bags we make and use. He calculated that if all the plastic bags we use were to be tied to each other, it would circle the Earth 776 times. That's crazy! The next thing he did was to try to get people to use thermal containers that could hold the food they buy, instead of having restaurants use take out boxes that are made out of plastic, paper or foam. At first the restaurants refused to accept, but after a while they realized that they were losing those customers that suggested that their foods be placed in the containers they brought with them. They eventually changed their minds. 

Reading the story of an average person that first started as unemployed and eventually became a businessman from one brilliant idea that could not only help him but also our environment is amazing. The main reason why we haven't gotten rid of this epidemic is because we have so many people assuming that they are just one person and their change of habit won't make a difference. The truth is it can. On a personal note, just like one glance to local dump changed Keller's viewpoints on his actions, reading Garbology has changed mine. Reading all these facts and stories told by people who've studied trash for years, made me realize the changes I need to make in my household. 

Garbology: Chapter 9

 

Chapter 9 of Garbology was both fascinating and disappointing. What fascinated me was how Recology, a waste company located in San Francisco, had talented artists like Andrew Junge and Hector Dio Mendoza create astonishing artwork from items found in local trash dumps. The disappointing side of this is the fact that we accumulate enough trash to make enormous art pieces. Humes specifies in Chapter 9 how Mendoza had put his designs together. The trunk of the tree is made out of drug ads, its branches built from credit card offers, and its leaves made out of catalog pages. It's a symbol of our terrible wasting habits in tree form is what I call it. Andrew Junge built a life-sized Hummer out of plastic foam.  

     I truly was amazed by Recology and the duties they perform. It is now one of the biggest trash companies around, as well as, the biggest organic compositor. Recology found a way to sort reusable trash and use them for fertilizer. By creating this cycle, we could reduce trash drastically. 

    

      After finishing Chapter 9, I began to realize the difference between recycling and actually making less waste. I agree with Humes' beliefs that, getting rid of this trash epidemic doesn't just mean that we have to waste less and take less to the landfills, its trying to change the mentalities of people. We have to make people understand that buying paper plates or throwing away tones of plastic bottles is not what our culture should be adapting to. We shouldn't make decisions with a scale of how convenient you could make your daily tasks. As people's mentalities change, people will buy less non-biodegradable products, manufacturer's will stop making them, and our landfills will stop piling up with things that just stick around.  

Response to "The Incinerators as Eye Candy" Article

I have just finished reading an article called "The Incinerators as Eye Candy" by Elizabeth Rosenthal. It talked about how she had discovered that in Vienna, they are building new plants and redesigning old plants by adding filters into it. These plants produce heat for electricity and are even artistically designed. To answer the question that is asked at the bottom of the article, I would honestly not mind having an incinerator in my backyard. Its decorated, filters toxic chemicals, produces electricity for my home, and is a step forward to helping our environment. An important factor is that it gets rid of my trash. Why not?

Garbology: Chapter 8

Chapter 8 discussed about a man named Bill Rathje, founder of the Garbage project. He became the world's first garbologist and his discoveries revealed our lack of understanding of our own waste. I have to say, he should be known as a legend across the world. His project began when two of his students from the athropology class he was teaching, decided to study stereotypical ideas by studying neighborhood trash. They concluded that too much food was being thrown away. In the U.S. Army alone, they were throwing away food that were still perfectly edible. They later began to save 2.5 million pounds of wasted foods. This influenced Rathje's ideas and drove him to start the Garbage Project.

Throughout his discoveries, Rathje concluded that the biggest issue with trash was indeed food wasting. About 17 percent of our average waste is comprised of good waste. He also discovered that hazardous household waste such as paint, was illegally being dumped into ordinary trash bins. Humes mentions how Rathje and his workers had designed special collection days but that only felt like it was making it worse. At first the term "garbology" was a joke, but now it is actually accepted in various English dictionaries defined as "the study of a community or culture by analyzing its waste"(qtd by Humes 168). We have so much trash that we've created a term and a study of garbage.

Rathje's main purpose for this project was to make people understand that they do not necessarily know what their own trash consists of. To prove this theory, he surveyed American households and concluded that families overestimate their average intake of healthy foods and exaggerate the amount of unhealthy food and alcohol they actually consume. 

What surprised me the most was Rathje's discovery about how the garbage that we think gets decomposed, actually just sits there in the landfills. They had found newspapers from hundreds of years back that was still easily readable. The devices that were built to be biodegradable did not break down at all. In the first few chapters of Garbology, Humes discussed an important discovery that talked about how it is possible to create electricity with the amount of methane found in landfills. Well is this not the answer to our landfill problems? The trash found in landfills is found to last for a long time, as it just sits in the dumps. Can't that also mean that we could use this to our benefit and create long lasting electricity source? Thats a question I would like to ask Humes himself.

The part of the chapter that really got me thinking was when it discussed about how society has made the word "trash" a synonym to "waste". As Humes says, it is something we want to disappear, but isn't waste a verb, an action? 

After finishing this chapter, I got to thinking. How is it that people prefer to buy so much as they're wasting their money, trash it shortly after, and pay  taxes with their money just to keep it out of sight. They shouldn't waste money on things they don't need in the first place. As I continue reading, I begin to process more and more information that I was blinded to all this time. We need to change routines that shouldn't be routines in the first place. 

Response to "The Story of Electronics" Video by Annie Leonard

In this video, Anne Leonard talks about how electronics are "designed for the dumps", as in-made in a way so it could be broken easily in order to drive you to buy a new one, therefore allowing companies to make more money. It is impossible to get a broken device fixed. This has happened to me so many times. I walked into the store hoping to get my phone fixed and I leave the store with a new phone I paid $200 for. They put the price high in order to convince you to buy a new item for a few dollars less, making you think that you're saving money.  These devices contain toxic materials such as mercury and flame retardants. These chemicals not only cause harm to our environment, but also to our bodies. "Workers making computer chips had 40% more miscarriages, together with having blood, brain, and/or kidney cancer" (Leonard). In order to get rid of this issue, we need to buy less, have regulations on companies and small businesses, and become educated on what we could do in order for these useless electronic products to be properly recycled. Workers who often work with these materials are from developmental countries that have no access to protective gears that can stop the intake of high chemical exposures. We need to go to its source. In order to make less trash, we need to use less trash. In my opinion, we should make companies get rid of warranty policies, and actually buy back broken products, and use its parts to create a new product. They can even consider to fix a customer's device instead of indirectly convincing them to purchase a new and improved one. We can even set regulations on the amount of trash each companies or small businesses throw away, and force violation fees to those who choose to not follow these regulations. We could even force electronic companies to make their products safer and long lasting. If manufacturers decide to take responsibility for the recycling of their own products, the problem will decrease incredibly. We need to sacrifice in order to save the planet we live on. 

Garbology Chapter 7

In Chapter 7 of Garbology, Edward Humes talked about how he believes that the reason why we have so much trash is because people are not educated about where all the trash leads too. What Humes specifies is that people carelessly dispose their trash and do not even wonder where all their junk goes, not even the people working in waste companies. The Waste Management Inc was the first "trash trackers". They had actually followed where their trash leads too by placing tracking devices on certain trash in order to count how far trash actually goes. They had selected one hundred homes and listed certain items to test: paper, cardboard, organics, leather, rubber, plastic, glass,metal, and e-waste. Someone had seen their old sneakers 337 miles away from where she was. A plastic traffic cone made it 6.6 miles away from where it originally was. From all the waste we create, e-waste by far has the worst consequences. Humes specifies that it raises serious questions about how much effort we actually put in order to prevent this. "Recycling in particular has long served as a balm and a penance- a way of making it okay to waste.."(Humes 154). We are always told to recycle or donate broken cell phones or computers but do not actually know where it goes. I myself have donated broken cell phones in order to feel better about "saving the environment", but now I am curious as to where it exactly goes. Are we recycling as much as EPA says we are? I wonder where all my trash is going.

Garbology Chapter 6

         Chapter 6 was by far one of the most interesting chapters of Garbology. It talked about how plastic was created, its unplanned influences, and how it is found everywhere. It begins by talking about Miriam Goldstein and her discoveries of nurdles. Nurdles are small grains of broken down plastic that is washed up on the shores of our beaches. Although they are found at almost every beach, people miss it almost always. It is easily taken for sea shells. Miriam Goldstein has been on extended sea voyages four times in less than two years trying to gather data. When she had gotten reports of the Pacific Garbage Patch, she had expected to see visible trash but she had found nothing. What they found instead were high concentrations of small plastic. What people do not understand is the impact that plastic is making. Half the oxygen we breathe in, come from plankton that live on the surface of the ocean. We depend on them. Plastic asks as a magnet or a sponge that attracts toxic chemicals. As these plankton eat the toxins, they bring toxins in the food chain, which is not only bad for the marine fish, but also to the humans that eat those fish. About 7 million tons of trash ends up in the ocean, with plastic being 80 percent. Plastic had started with an American chemist named Leo Baekland. Plastic first started off with radios, telephones, and retro items and soon ended up everywhere. It was this flexible, interesting new product that interested everyone.
       I feel like we have become so dependent on plastic because of the fact of how quick and convenient it makes everything. Instead of washing so many dishes for example, people use plastic cups, plates, and utencils. All that plastic is disposed and washed up into the ocean. Plastic feels light and harmless, but in reality it affects our environment tremendously. After I had finished reading this chapter, I looked around my room and realized how much plastic there is. I am just one person in one house and I accumulate this much plastic. It's pretty disappointing.

Garbology Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Garbology mainly addressed about a sixty year old woman named Mary Crowley and her experiences throughout Project Kaisei. During her time at sea, she had seen our trash floating in the ocean, from floating detergent bottles to lawn chairs to cracked pieces of plastic. What grabbed my attention was when Crowley mentioned that it wasn't what she saw that terrified her, it was what she couldn't see. She talked about how she couldn't see anything from the surface but when she got samples of the sea water, she found tiny pieces of plastic, "trash confetti" that is too small to be pointed out by the naked eye. She refers to the ocean as plastic chowder. The chapter referenced different scientists that had worked with Crowley through her discoveries and examined the intestines of fish that lived around the areas that had the most pollution. Researches found more than 9 percent of the fish had plastic in their digestive tracts. A two year old whale, located in the San Francisco Bay Area contained 450 pounds of debris in its digestive tracts and later died from starvation. We are causing deaths in order to live comfortably. Bar soap alone, Humes explains, contains tiny grains of plastic. Each time we take a shower with our favorite scented shampoo, we are draining down grains of plastic that eventually land inside a baby whales intestines. All our illegal dumping add up. An engineer named Norton Smith, worked with Crowley in inventing The Beach. This device was used to collect plastic from the sea by being careful not to suck in marine life with it. After multiple tests, the device was successful. I truly agreed with Crowley's point of how building such a time consuming and expensive device is pointless, when what we should really do is have a "worldwide reduction in disposable plastic garbage, and an end to the constant flow of plastic that goes missing every year, and ends up as marine chowder"(Humes 123). Although The Beach was successful, we didn't have a need for that. What we need is to correct our mistakes in order to not make it worse. We need to use less plastic in our products and try to find another source. If manufacturers internationally decide to make their products safer, we could put an end to this unintended plastic chowder.

Response to the " 19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans" Article

          The article "19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans" by Timon Singh talked about a 19 year old named Boyan Slate that created a device called the Ocean Cleanup Array. This device is made up of floating tunnels that force plastic into its direction. It filters and stores things that could be recycled, and separates trash from marine animals that get sucked into the machine. The cleanup process was estimated to be about five years. I think that this was the revolutionary discovery the world was waiting for. More people should be aware of this device, for it could create an end to this plastic epidemic tremendously. I cannot believe a nineteen year old student constructed such a device that could change the world. What I really liked most about this project is the fact that it is designed in such a way that the workers have the ability to keep track of what the ocean cleanup array collects. It collects and also stores products that could possibly be recycled. One device could clean up more than 7 million plastic particles. The world was waiting for Boyan Slate.

Response to the "Scripps Study Shows Plastic in Pacific Patch Has Increased 100-Fold" Article

This article talks about how plastic in the Great Pacific increased 100 times from the estimations they had concluded forty years ago. Researchers had found insects that had laid eggs in these pieces of small plastic. It is really sad because we are harming not only harming our environment, but also the habitats that animals depend on. The shores that animals use to lay their fertilized eggs on are filled with tiny particles of plastic that marine animals confuse for their eggs. This article explains how people assume that the plastics that are found in oceans are just plastic bottles and other sorts of trash but rather, it consists more of tiny particles of plastic broken down to sizes that are impossible to be seen by the naked eye. It is disappointing to hear that the Pacific Ocean, the closest ocean to the U.S. has an increase of the amount of plastic it consumes. Our trash crisis is worse than I thought.

Response to the "Even If We Stopped Polluting Today, Ocean Garbage Patches Would Linger For Hundreds Of Years" Article

          I just finished reading the article "Even If We Stopped Polluting Today, Ocean Garbage Patches Would Linger For Hundreds Of Years" by Beth Buczynki and was absolutely amazed by what I came across. The article talks about the cycle of plastic and how it ends up in the ocean. An attached video in the article explained how researchers tossed surface drifter boards into the ocean. The boards were specially designed to act like plastics. This allowed them to estimate the amount of time plastic remains in the ocean and demonstrated the way they move around and travel all around the world.

  I was truly amazed to hear the cycle of plastic and the way they land in the oceans, how the sun breaks its particles down over time, and how plankton and birds eat this plastic that may even contain toxins. As they eat the toxins, they add toxins into the food chain. It was discussed that getting the plastics out of the ocean is impossible because of how small and diverse it could be. In order to get rid of this issue, we need to go to its source. Companies that manufacture plastics internationally should make them in a way that it could break down and disintegrate over time, so that even if they do end up in our oceans, they won't cause problems like they do today.
          There is more plastic in the ocean than marine life. This is impossible to comprehend. After reading this, I am not sure if the fish I purchase is fish or fresh plastic from our oceans. What interested my attention the most was how our ocean water circulates through eddies, sending our pollution to other countries and vice versa. I feel that people are just waiting for the last minute to actually do something about our world's trash crisis. In order to not forever live in a world of rubbish, we must contribute from all around in order to decrease the use of plastic and littering to not only our oceans, but also to the rest of our environment. As I get deeper into this issue, I get more concerned and terrified. It is crazy how much trash we accumulate, yet we have no idea what we are leading our world into.

Garbology: Chapter 4

           Chapter 4 talked mostly about the history of landfills. He began discussing about Waste Management Inc, the hottest investment prospect in the country. In 2004, America decided to create power plants that had the ability to convert landfill gas to electricity. Beneficial as they are, they do not get rid of landfills, but instead are dependent on trash in order to function. For many years, residence around the San Gabriel Valley protested against the production of power plants. In some ways, I feel that processing trash into a gasoline substitute for cars is not such a bad idea. Sure, transporting trash to the deserts through trains seems expensive, but shouldn't we put that aside and look at the benefits? We could actually put an end to this crisis. This could maintain our trash, refrain us from finding gas or oil from different resources, and could also make us a lot of money. Power plants could reduce the volume of trash by 95 percent. It has the ability to absorb 100 million tons of garbage. Its a shame because we didn't even bother because landfills sounded cheaper. For now it seems that "contingency plans became [our] only plans"(Humes 96). I really don't understand how people during 1983 organized strikes that stood against the production of power plants, but are okay with our mountainous Puente Hills. Why aren't we finding solutions for this? We've reached the point where Puente Hills is looking at closing down for good. Where are we going to put our now? We can't put it behind our ears and just wait for someone else to figure out what to do with this. We need to work together.

Response to the "My Exhibit...In the Museum of Trash" Article

I have just finished reading the "My Exhibit...In the Museum of Trash" article by Dave Chameides, "Sustainable Dave". Dave shared his story of how for one whole year, he had collected up his trash in his basement instead of throwing it away.  Dave Chameides had created 28.5 pounds of trash in one year by himself! When the year came to a close, instead of throwing away all that trash he collected, he had decided to enter it into the Museum of Trash in Connecticut. It kind of made me think of doing something similar in order to count how much trash I accumulate every year. I'm actually kind of curious.

Response to The Story Of Stuff Video

I just finished watching The Story Of Stuff video by Annie Leonard. Throughout the video, Annie was talking about how those who are in charge of managing trash create a pretty picture of their actual dirty work. They affect much more than what they say they do. That statement automatically interested me to continue watching. She thoroughly explained how we are losing forests in order to make room for landfills. It's come to that. Natural forests all chopped away. The part that interested me the most was when she mentioned how by just going "green", bringing reusable bags to the grocery store or recycling bottles and cans is resolving our problem completely. Sure, it is helping, but that does not come close to saving economic and political structures of our waste. Following on that statement, I feel that we need to start our improvements from the core of the issue. We need to set companies,small businesses, and restaurants on standardized regulations that gives a limit to how much trash they should throw away. Setting a certain limit like this could drastically change the amount of trash we make daily.

Garbology: Chapter 3

       In Chapter 3, Humes continues talking about Puente Hills, this time introducing us to the common and unusual things one finds at dumps. What really grabbed my interest was the story of the fifty five year old man’s, Robert Glenn Bennet’s, body being found lying with the trash at Puente Hills. The amount of trash we throw and what is really found in dumps has crossed my mind, but I have never pictured a dead body mixed with a city’s trash. It must be really difficult working under those conditions every day. You never know what you could come across.

      The chapter had also mentioned Lippincott and his beliefs that the more we waste, the more stuff his clients could sell, the more customers would buy, and the more prosperous America would become. “He mastered the art of making a product or a company or a concept appear to be something it was not,” as Humes said. I personally do not believe that this concept is the best way to make an economy prosper. While Lippincott’s idea is benefiting America’s economy, it is causing more trash, pollution, and contamination. Isn’t the whole concept of his idea to make money? Well, as their polluting the environment with their 'benefits for America', the government in return has to spend millions of dollars for research and environment safety precautions due to the crisis we’re facing with so much trash and so little acceptable ways to get rid of it. We waste so much money on local landfills, garbage truck and recycling companies, when all we need to do is learn how to waste less. This idea had caused large amounts of consumer debt in 2006 and yet we can’t help ourselves. I feel that there should be a balance. We do need to spend, but not so excessively. Vance Packard, in his book The Waste Makers, wrote about how Lippincott's ideas are wrong and that wastefulness has become a part of the American way of life. He would mock those who had just one telephone, a TV, and a car. Now each family member in an ordinary family has a cellphone and a car and a television in each room. My family is even guilty of this. 

      Lastly, the third  important topic discussed was our crisis with plastic. Humes explains in Chapter 3 how we have become dependent on plastic so much that practically everything is made with plastic these days. 

I feel that our economy has based themselves upon what they could do to pay less for their products and make more profit instead. Take Coca Cola as an example. Coca Cola used to sell their soft drinks in glass bottles that allowed a refill option in the 60s. Now, soft drinks are filled in plastic bottles instead because plastic costs less in manufacturing. Plastic can never be decomposed or recycled. Our country is filled with soft drink drinkers. That says how much plastic we add on to our waste. Another example is unnecessarily over packaging. A simple microwavable pizza is packaged with a cardboard underneath, a plastic wrapper covering, a plastic wrapper on top of that, and all that placed in another cardboard box. 

I feel that people make these mistakes because of lack of education. If everyone had an idea of how much we waste per person daily, we would change our ways.

Interesting Facts

Was I the only one that was kind of surprised about the fact that "The Valley Of Ashes" mentioned in Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby was actually a mountainous waste dump in New York? Crazy.

Response to the article by Terry Gross

           I have just finished reading the article about an interview with Edward Humes, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Garbology. Throughout the interview, Humes was answering several questions about his book and the research he had collected while writing. After reading Humes’ responses, I began to think that the idea of using sources of methane from our wastes and creating energy with it is not such a bad idea. I feel that this could maybe help us get rid of a lot of our trash while putting it in good use. Because America is not looking at this idea as an option, I feel that it’s our responsibility to try and waste less. After reading the first three chapters of Garbology, I got an idea of the amount of trash we throw every day. I feel that since we are capable of throwing away so much, we are capable of cleaning and saving equally as much. The more we clean after ourselves, the more we’ll see a difference in our environment. We should learn to recycle more by easily reusing plastic plates, cups, or utensils instead of picking up a new one as we switch from eating dinner to desert. We need to stop leaving garbage behind during our picnics at the beach in order for it not to wash into the oceans and eventually to the digestive tracks of a fish. I feel that maybe this should worry some people, considering the fact that this could be the fish we consume as food. It definitely worries me. Edward Humes mentioned that, “The amount of garbage patches encompass about 40 percent of the global ocean surface, more territory than all of Earth’s dry lands put together.” This statistics put me in a complete shock for this is just regarding patches of plastic! Where do we fit the rest? 

      I had also really liked Humes’ idea of each company having responsibility towards their products and for them to buy back a broken product, use its pieces to make a new product instead of having warranty policies. I hope they actually enforce this because it could really help recycle thousands of electronic devices.  This way we could recycle broken items by using its parts to build a new product. After finishing this article, I have decided to keep a tote bag with me at all times in order to stay away from wasting so much paper or plastic. This book really opened my eyes. Our world has many flaws, but this is the biggest one yet.

Garbology: Chapters 1 and 2

       Garbology is a Pulitzer Prize winning book filled with facts and statistics in which people like us have created but haven't really took note of. The book starts off with an introduction that is presented through an anecdote. It illustrates a word picture through the Gaston's, a family that had been trapped by their own trash. They had survived, yes, but the idea that one could be trapped from their own garbage, and possibly die like the Collyer brothers is insane! Americans create 102 tons of trash per person per day. That's a record I'm not really proud we achieved. 

      In Chapter 1, we get introduced to a man named Mike Speiser 'Big Mike' and his many contributions to the formation of the Puente Hills landfills, located south of the San Gabriel Valley. His greatest accomplishment comprises 130 million tons of trash and counting. Puente Hills is greater than five hundred feet above the original ground level, big enough to have its own micro climate and wind patterns.What is surprising me is the fact that we made this happen. Why haven't we found a solution yet to how we're going to get rid of this trash properly without causing damage to the environment? We've become a nation that sells trash to foreign countries, buy products that's been packaged inside cardboard formed by our recycled trash, and throw the packaging material inside our bins in order to sell our garbage again.
A simple example we're all guilty of; we all have perfectly working Iphones, yet when a newer version comes out, we run to the store and purchase it just so we could have that new feature in our hands as we toss the other one in the bin. It's all trends. We cause it, we follow it, and we destroy the environment because of it. 

     Chapter 2 was mostly stressed towards New York City during the twentieth century. Causes of death were relating to the illnesses spreading through Europe during the Dark Ages. A large amount of people were dying due to illnesses caused by garbage thrown on the streets, causing pollution and unsafe drinking water. A man named William Strong made it his duty to clean up the city. He was a Civil War veteran who had worked as an engineer in the city. He had decided to construct a sewer drainage system in order to protect the city water supply from contamination. He had created a group of street cleaners that were eventually nicknamed "White Wings" due to their white uniform. Him and his crew had become icons. He had come up with the idea of households dividing their waste into three bins: ash, food waste, and other sorts of garbage. After his passing, the number of automobiles multiplied, causing huge smog problems that led to "Black Monday." From backyard incinerators to tons of trash thrown in the ocean, we have not yet found a solution. In some ways I think we need another William Strong.

First Post

Hi 113A students: 

Welcome to my blog. I'm Natalie. 

 I'm writing my first post for testing purposes. Keep tabs on my blog to see what comments,  questions or discussion topics I have posted regarding our English class. Feel free to comment anything below my posts. Enjoy the rest of your day!