Trash

I was lying around thinking about trash a while back.  I guess because we had been talking about "Idiocracy" which led me to contemplate trash when I was trying to fall asleep.  As with most of the world's large problems, I believe I came up with what seems to be a reasonable, yet simple solution.

First I thought about from where it was that the trash comes.  I thought about this at the most basic level.  Everything we create, which then becomes trash, has come from the ground in some form.  All of it. There are large holes in the earth in many areas from mining.  Huge empty quarries. Everything is made from something that we have mined from the earth.

Next I thought about how we currently deal with our trash problems.  We pile it up in big mounds or float it on barges on various bodies of water.  This is the problem.  It doesn't go away.  The junk piled up take forever to break down and become part of the earth again.  Some of the bits never break down, like the plastic things. So what do we do with that stuff?

Well, I'll tell ya.

Seems to me the problem is in the break down.  It doesn't happen quick enough.  We take crap from the earth faster than the earth takes it back.  All we have to do is help it along. We need to break it down for the earth. 

I propose that all garbage trucks come equipped with chipper/shredder type devices to break up the trash into small "bite-sized" chunks.  Once the garbage is removed from the trucks it then needs to go into a machine that grinds it up even further.  The bits can then be deposited in the earth.  We need to start with the quarries and mines and other large holes we created in the earth.  Fill them up first.  Why pile the trash up when we have perfectly good holes from whence it originally came? I don't believe anyone is using these "holes" and most of them are dangerous or unused space anyway.

"What about the plastic?" you may ask (especially if you are a hippie earth-hugger of some sort) Well, what about the plastic? Sure it doesn't break down but it's ground up into really tiny bits. Remember? It's mixed in with all the other trash bits and even if it doesn't break down it will become a part of the earth.  We might possibly be creating some sort of new soil but since nothing is being done with the mines and quarries and various holes, does it really matter?  It will eventually pack itself down into some layer of the earth.  From what I understand, plastic freely exchanges it molecules with other things that come in contact with it, so what it creates may end up being some sort of  "super soil" with any luck.

I think my plan will work.  After all, look at sand; it's just really tiny ground up bits of glass, right?