Landfills: The Realization

        During my trip to the DADS landfill I experienced repulsive feelings towards how much trash we as a society create with no thought of what happens to it once it is “thrown away”. The majority of people seem to have no second thoughts once they throw out their waste; to them it is just out of sight, out of mind. But I am no saint either, for I was guilty of such ignorance before I witnessed a landfill firsthand. It never really dawned on me before what it actually means for something to be thrown away. As long it wasn't in front of me stinking up my room I didn't care. Now that I've seen where my trash goes first-hand, I am much more aware of the problems we have created and how urgently solutions should be found and enacted to fix them. 



         My photograph juxtaposes one single trash bag against hundreds of tons of trash to convey the magnitude of the landfill. Standing there I was in awe at how massive the pile was; and the fact that for a hundred feet below me lay more waste was mind-boggling. It really put into perspective how much we really throw away and to think that beneath me were hundreds of thousands plastic bags just like the one at my feet made me sick. Then the wind picked up and I was hit with this rotting stench of which I can't explain. The smell and sight was nearly enough to make me lose my stomach. It was repulsive to know this is what we have done to our planet. The images still burn vividly in my head.
         After we got back from the landfill I found myself reading Earth In Mind by David Orr and this quote stuck me. "Toward the natural world, [education] emphasizes theories, not values; abstraction rather than consciousness; neat answers instead of questions; and technical efficiency over conscience" (Orr 7). I then realized my ignorance of landfills was due to how I was taught all these years. Only very rarely would I have a teacher that emphasized values and asking "why?" over the banking methods most teachers employed. We were taught to memorize useless facts and statistics rather than dig deeper, apply them to the world around us, and respect deep ecology. It seemed that landfills and ecosystem awareness were not on their list of "district requirements".

-Cooper Leith