It has come to my attention that not everyone (including someone close to me) understands what an effect they have on the environment when they throw food on the ground and walk away. The claim I heard is "It is biodegradable, so it isn't littering." That makes no sense to me. I find that attitude to be like "Someone else will clean up my mess." This is the same attitude that got us into the environmental mess in the first place.
Let's assume for a minute that biodegradable in this argument means in the soil where the necessary bacteria and other microorganisms.
Below is a list of some common items that fall under this argument
Most directions for making a home compost pile advise against adding hard-to-break-down food waste, such as cherry seeds. Cherry and other fruit pits can take up to 10 years to completely decompose. Reference
Banana Peel 2-5 weeks Reference Reference 2 Reference 3
Apple Core 2 months Reference
A cigarette takes 3-10 months to mostly decompose and some say it can take up to as much as twelve years; however, the filter which is made of acetate will NEVER fully break down. Reference Cigarette butts: 1-12 years Reference
Paper: 2-5 weeks Reference
Orange peels: 6 months Reference
Cotton rags 1-5 months Reference
Plastic or cardboard milk carton: 5 years Reference
Okay, so you may be thinking to yourself, that isn't bad. Well consider this. If you properly bury the materials these times are about right. However, if you put them in a landfill they process is greatly slowed down. To the tune of decades and tens of decades before they biodegrade. Researchers have found 25-year old apple cores and newspapers in near perfect condition, found in landfills with garbage from thousands of other households. Reference
Here is the reality of what happens.
What happens when you throw something in the street of your favorite city you may be wondering. Here are some options.
1. It gets washed down a storm drain by a rain. I live in Arizona, so not likely. This can clog, pollute, and create other crazy problems depending on the stuff that makes it into the storm drain.
2. A street sweep comes by and picks it up. This eventually ends up in the landfill where we don't want it either, but not any worse than putting it in your household trash.
3. It may be blown away by the wind if it is small or light enough. Sign me up to inhale trash or watch trash go tumbling down the street. That always makes me feel good about where I live.
Let's assume that you think it is ok to pay taxes to have street sweepers sweep up your mess. Maybe there should be an item on everyone's tax return that the abusers can check to INCREASE their tax because someone has to pay for using the landfill, the street sweepers, the guys that drive the sweepers, the guys that compact the trash, etc. How many people do you think would check that box on their tax return. NONE. Nothing is free in this world. There is a cost for everything. Take care of your own trash.
Let's assume there was no cost to clean it up. Let's assume it biodegrades in a couple of weeks. Well, we need a place for it to biodegrade. I suggest the front yards of all the people that want to throw it on the ground in the first place. I would love to hear their argument when their entire front yard is covered with all the stuff that is just biodegrading. My comment to them would be, "Don't worry it will biodegrade in two weeks if you are lucky. Be sure to turn it so it does that properly. Otherwise it may take a lot longer. Don't mind the smell or the flies or other insects that it attracts. This is natures way after all. Oh and be sure everything is 100 natural. Even then extreme concentrations of anything can become toxic. I hope you aren't doing any home growing in your yard. I don't think I want to eat a carrot from 5 million melted hard candies and gum (yes it is just a made up number, but we have a big city). Better yet, how about they drive around with this stuff in their cars. I bet they'll make some friends.
I write this after being quite pissed off at how people treat our planet. The tone of this is harsh, but I think people need to think and understand the implications of their actions. I'll admit I don't compost, but I do reuse then recycle, and I try not to waste much of anything. Someday I would like to try composting, but in the meantime I'll settle for just picking up my own mess and not making it somebody else's problem. If we all did that our streets would look a lot better. Who knows maybe the IRS will give us a credit if we can prove we pick up our own trash instead of throwing it on the ground. (yeah right ;)
2 comments:
Ok so you would like to compost but for now settle for trashing EVERYTHING? I DO compost as much as I can- and have a pile set up on my apartment patio near my little itty-bitty square foot gardening box out there. What's stopping you? I think leaving an orange peel or something similar next to a tree on the side of the road is a lot better than sending it to a landfill. Litter is bad because of the toxic chemicals- leaving out old buckets of paint or something like that POLLUTES the environment, apple cores do NOT! While we can't just go leaving our garbage any old place, I see no problem in dropping said apple core under a bush where it can replenish the soil instead of wasting away with all the modern man-made junk which is generally useless and even harmful to the environment. What do you think ppl did in the past??? Litter (aka trash) wasn't a real problem then (lack of sanitary conditions from not having good systems for dealing with fecal matter was, but this will "decompose" whereas our modern day single serving potato chip bags will not). That's the big problem- man made objects (mostly commercial packaging) that either won't decompose or do so extremely slowly. The bigger question here needs to be not what to do with our trash but why do we have so much trash to begin with- mostly due to, again, industrialization and our overly commercialized culture of consumerism.
Anonymous,
I think I'd like to clarify things a bit. First I believe in first reducing and then reusing and then recycling. Recycling is my last resort (other than putting it in a landfill). The equivalent of that for food is composting and I am guilty of not composting yet. However, I do practice similar techniques and that is to reduce the amount of food that is wasted to begin with. One step at a time. I expect I will start composting.
I totally agree about the toxic and stuff that doesn't decay hardly. It is too bad that more of it can't be recycled or reused. There are some changes to that such as sun chips now have biodegradable bags. This is very cool in my opinion and a huge step in the right direction.
One point I would like to drive home is that I don't believe these apple core or other biodegradable items have a place in a modern city unless you put it in your own yard and even then I don't want it in mine. The logic goes something like this. Most every place where I live has a lawn service that comes every two weeks or less. This means that these people will come by and rake. I don't believe they will rake and then put the apple core back. Then these lawn waste gets hauled off to the landfill right where we didn't want it in the first place. The same goes for a street sweeper.
So now what has essentially happened is the biodegradable item has been sitting for close to 2 weeks before it is found. Most items as noted on this page take longer that two weeks especially in open air (not in the soil) to decompose completely. So now there are more bugs and our community looks trashy in the meantime and no benefit that I can see.
My belief is that by putting biodegradable stuff in other peoples property you are littering or at the very violating their space. If someone through an apple core or 50 in my front yard I would be very unhappy.
With that said, the amount of trash that the average american generates is huge. We definitely need to reduce that.
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