Resolve the Garbage and Landfill Crisis with Just Two Words

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59133056

First let’s be clear what we usually mean when we talk about “Garbage” or “The Garbage Crisis”. We mean the material goods that we no longer want in our home, the stuff that we drag out to the kerb and that the town council carts away in a noisy, smelly diesel truck. We include broken glass, food scraps, cans and bottles (even if they are in a separate bin) and so on. Some people proudly boast they have gone zero-garbage but we think that they are lying.

Next let’s be clear what we mean when we talk about “The Landfill Crisis”. We usually mean that a patch of what was once nature-covered land has now become filled up with what we call Garbage. We mean the place to which the town council dumps our Garbage material from a noisy diesel truck. Sometimes the Landfill site is an old quarry. One nation I know of wanted to store radioactive garbage in an abandoned gold mine, so help me!

Around the dinner-table these two definitions should hold. Every man and his dog has an opinion on what should be done about Garbage, and ever man and his dog holds forth with plans for the current, or the next Landfill site.

And therein lies the problem: not that “everyone is talking about it, but no-one is doing anything about it”. No. The problem is that people are talking about “Garbage” and “Landfill”

People are talking about the problem, and the more we focus on the problem, the less we can or will focus on the solution. The problem is where we are; the solution is where we want to be.

Listen carefully to the next conversation (or written article) that includes the word “garbage”, and you will see and hear people intensely focused on a pile of matter that nobody appears to want. You will see and hear people swirling in a deadly spiral into a whirlpool that threatens to suck them under, for ever.

I can promise you this: If you drop the word “Garbage” from your lexicon today, if from this moment onwards you never again make use of the word Garbage, your view on life, and hence your own life, will improve.

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