Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Book review

I'm going to start doing book reviews of books of books I've read that I think have some general relevancy to the public. With the cold weather approaching I'll be able to pick up my reading so this is something you should see more often going forward, although it will taper off when the weather is nice outside.

I recently finished reading a book called Garbageland by Elizabeth Royte. I picked this book up to read after seeing it recommended on the Hen Waller website. I found it to be quite interesting. The author decides that she wants to track her garbage and see what kind of impact her family is having on the environment. This leads to her starting to monitor and weigh her family's trash (yes, really) and to her studying the future home of her trash. She visits landfills around her house, recycling centers and sewage treatment facilities. She begins composting her organic refuse, albeit not completely successfully, and she spends a lot of time talking to environmentalists about the impact our disposable lifestyle is having on the world around us. She spends some time riding with some NYC sanitation workers learning about trash and recycling habits of people, and she traveled to Berkeley to learn about their extremely successful sanitation program.

Two things from the book that really stuck with me
Only 2% of the trash generated today is municipal garbage, meaning garbage generated from residences. The rest is generated by industry and commercial groups. This is mind blowing to me. Think about how much trash is generated by households and it's only 2% of the trash generated each year? Wow. For us to reduce our trash generation as a country the key is to reduce trash generation for the 98%, not the 2% where we currently are trying to focus all our efforts.

Currently most types of plastic can only be recycled one time. Once. Then it has to be throw away. (I figured plastic could be recycled over and over.) In a perfect world plastic could be recycled over and over, but for that to happen you have to maintain the purity of each type of plastic to a certain integrity, which won't happen because too many people commingle their recycled materials. Makes me think about buying more products wrapped in cardboard (extremely easy to recycle and can be done many times) or glass which can be reused by me over and over. (Glass has no recycle value because it is cheaper to buy glass made from scratch than recycled glass in our current world, and according to this book, a lot of the glass we put in our recycle bins is just broken up and dumped in the trash at the recycling centers.)

I would recommend this book to everyone, but only if you have no interest in continuing the American consumerism lifestyle. Once you read this book and see how much trash people generate while maintaining their current lifestyles you will definitely feel differently about how you live. Especially those of you who live in areas that don't even recycle their trash at all, or even compost your organic materials.

Enjoy

FGLB

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