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.