29,808

29,808 pounds. After 18 years of throwing away, I have added 29,808 pounds to the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site. I can’t comprehend how much trash that really is. Nor can I even begin to fathom the 24 million pounds DADS receives on an average day. And so, like Chris Jordan, I strive for an image to understand all my old stuff that’s now buried into mountains of trash. Broken toys, sunglasses, party favors and gag gifts, plastic silverware, plastic bags, bottles of nail polish, dried-up pens, pens that work perfectly fine, and packages from everything. All those little things I’ve lost: earrings, Chap Stick, water bottles, pencils, ponytail holders, they’ve probably ended up in the landfill too. Not to mention all that Styrofoam. Or all the paper or cardboard or plastic or glass or aluminum I’ve been too lazy to find a recycling bin for. I have joined humanity in the “unconscious and collective” consumption of excess (Jordan). I have joined the Denver-metro area in the filling of open space with waste.

I am a Colorado native. I have grown up, in every sense of the phrase, among the mountains, streams, plains and forests that make up this great state. David Orr argues in Earth in Mind for a sense of place in developing an environmental ethical compass to determine “’should do’ from ‘can do’” (Orr, 15). Colorado has plenty of undeveloped land that could be filled with trash; the landfills can expand and expand. But should I allow it, even cause it with my own trash production?

As a child growing up watching Fern Gully and planning trees on earth day, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is the catchphrase of my life. I like to consider myself pretty environmentally aware but I am ashamed to admit how close my personal trash production is to the statistical 4.6 pounds a day.  Standing outside the bus at DADS, in that odd light powdery dirt, avoiding breathing in the stench, I picked out the details of the trash heap. Cardboard and granola bar wrappers, along with items that seemed so necessary, but were cast away without thought. I saw all that I’ve thrown away, and began to understand the scale of all 29,808 pounds I’ve discarded.

Boy, do I need to be living that catchphrase a little bit better. 

 

Jordan, Chris. "Picturing Excess." TED Blog. N.p., Feb. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2012. <http://blog.ted.com/2008/06/18/chris_jordan/>.

Orr, David W. "Introduction, The Problem of Education." Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Washington, DC, [etc.: Island, 1994. N. pag. Print.