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.