If I Live to Be a Hundred …

Supposing you wanted to Make the World a Cleaner Place.

Supposing you could measure how much material you were throwing out as garbage each year.

Supposing you could reduce your garbage by a mere one percent each year.

Then by the time I reach a hundred years of age, your garbage would be reduced to less than eighty-percent of what it was.

This of course is the same argument used for seriously shedding some weight or even flab. Or reducing annual expenses.

The process is the same.

Set a measure. You might choose to count the number of black garbage bags you set out each week. These are garbage bags that go straight to your local landfill site. Not you Green Waste bins. Not your Blue Recycling bins. Not your Grey papers bins. Not your … And separate from your expensive leaf-collection paper sacks from the hardware store.

On the fridge stick a piece of paper and record the numbers week by week. Summarize each calendar month if you wish. At Christmas and new year, announce the year’s total and talk about reducing it next year.

In particular, next years objective is to reduce the number of bags by one percent.

Of course, if you set out but one bag each week, and that not even full, some bright spark might suggest putting out bags only when they are full (or at a pinch, particularly stinky). Just because your diesel truck spews fumes down your street every Wednesday, that doesn’t mean it has to stop at your driveway.

Next year your bag total will plummet. The total might be only half of this year’s total. Fifty percent. Just like that!

But you don’t slack off for the next fifty years.

Your third year objective is to reduce the previous (Second) year’s total by one percent, remember, and so you do.

Then by the time I turn a hundred years old, your garbage will be down to forty percent of its original total.

When your children leave home, present them with a certificate showing your households previous year’s total. After all, they too will need an objective.

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