{"id":2149,"date":"2011-06-19T00:04:42","date_gmt":"2011-06-19T05:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2011-06-19T00:04:42","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T05:04:42","slug":"the-disappearance-of-garbage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/the-disappearance-of-garbage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disappearance of Garbage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Never mind \u201cCity of the big shoulders.\u201d Chicago is the City of the Big Garbage Cans. Behind my old four-occupant, two-unit apartment building stood four 96-gallon supercart containers: two black ones for garbage, and two blue ones for recycling. Together, these monstrosities could have held 384 gallons of garbage and recycling, and the City of Chicago was prepared to empty all of them every single week!<\/p>\n<p>In spite of our big garbage cans, I\u2019m starting to see a shift in the way the world thinks about garbage. Outside of Chicago, garbage can sizes are shrinking as cities offer larger containers for recycling and yard waste\/compost material. Collection calendars are shrinking, too. Skagit  County tackles the waste-generating, big-container-frequent-pickup mindset by offering weekly, twice-monthly, or monthly collection. Every two weeks I set out a few ounces of plastic packaging and bottle caps in a 32-gallon can. Monthly pickup\u2014or no pickup at all\u2014is in my future.<\/p>\n<p>Garbage is disappearing. It\u2019s becoming a resource. \u201cThere is no garbage, only fuel we haven\u2019t converted yet,\u201d says one energy expert. In Denmark, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/13\/science\/earth\/13trash.html\">garbage burned in very clean incinerators<\/a> is an alternative energy source. In Washington and other states, methane from landfills is captured and converted into electricity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUrban mining\u201d is gaining traction. Mining companies in Japan and China (and soon, the U.S.) are extracting rare-earth elements and minerals from cellphones, computers, and other electronics in landfills. Peninsula Plastics &amp; Recycling in Turlock, California is remolding millions of pounds of plastic bottles into packaging for fruit, cookies, and cupcakes. Oft-cited on the internet is this nugget: Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.\u00a0 <em><\/em>If that\u2019s true (I can\u2019t find the source of that statement), mining landfilled aluminum can\u2019t be far behind.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s my favorite: the Zero Waste trend. It\u2019s partly an industry push to redesign products to eliminate wasteful packaging like plastic clamshells, and partly an individual quest to keep garbage at bay by buying in bulk, reusing containers, and otherwise avoiding packaging. The Zero Waste mantra? \u201cRefuse, refuse, refuse\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t buy it!\u201d\u00a0 These folks are upgrading the old three Rs into five\u2014Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Rot (compost) and <em>then<\/em> Recycle\u2014and launching a great new word: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.missminimalist.com\/2010\/04\/the-minsumer-movement-a-quiet-revolution\/\">minsumerism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here are two Zero Waste slide shows to watch: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunset.com\/home\/natural-home\/zero-waste-home-0111-00418000069984\/\">this one <\/a>about a California family that produces almost no  garbage, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/gallery\/2008\/aug\/05\/japan.recycling#\/?picture=336197930&amp;index=0\">this one <\/a> about the village of Kamikatsu,  Japan, on track to become first place in the world to produce Zero Waste.<\/p>\n<p>This is one race to the bottom\u2014the bottom of my garbage can\u2014that I\u2019m really going to enjoy!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anne Basye, <em>Sustaining Simplicity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Never mind \u201cCity of the big shoulders.\u201d Chicago is the City of the Big Garbage Cans. Behind my old four-occupant, two-unit apartment building stood four 96-gallon supercart containers: two black ones for garbage, and two blue ones for recycling. Together, these monstrosities could have held 384 gallons of garbage and recycling, and the City of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,6081,104,221,1718],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-environment","tag-garbage","tag-recycling","tag-simple-living","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Disappearance of Garbage - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/the-disappearance-of-garbage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Disappearance of Garbage - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Never mind \u201cCity of the big shoulders.\u201d Chicago is the City of the Big Garbage Cans. 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