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.