Trash, revisited

My current read. Picked up Trash at the Moca store. Good collection of photographs and essays on, well, trash, written from various perspectives. Covers alot of ground. Everything to the beauty of post-industrial waste sites to airspace ("a logistical term that defines the maximum filling capacity of a site") and how Bill Gates has invested in such airspace (or waste dumps) since 2001. Shares of his waste-handling portfolio has risen at least 45% in the past 5 years or so. Apparently waste dumps are big money. It goes on to talk about how about how Canada has filled up certain waste sites, turned them into golf courses, and consequently subverted their waste products to some places in Michigan, namely, areas formerly known as Carleton Farms and Pine Tree Acres. Michigan is supposedly one of the biggest places for airspace in the area for the Great Lakes region. Or put another way, Michigan can be construed as one of the nation's leading trash dumps. The waste is then compacted by giant diesel-powered D12 CAT dozers. Since solid waste is 30-40% liquid, this so-called 'leachate', which is basically liquid from waste, is pumped back up from the dregs of the waste, and then sprayed back on the waste to further compact it. I wonder how the leachate would fare if it was pumped into the Living Machines? -

Another article talks about the non-profit, Keep America Beautiful. It was founded by various bottling manufacturers, Coca-Cola, and the Richfield Oil Corporation, among others. You know, organizations with a vested interest in people and the environs. Their initial aim was to:

masterfully transform its (debris) meaning to shift the terms of the garbage debate, diverting any stirrings of environmental awareness away from industry's massive and supertoxic destruction of the natural world. Ecological disaster was reduced to the "eyesore" of litter, and the real villain was the notorious "litterbug" who failed to put his discards in the proper place....The key tactic of blaming individuals obfuscated the real causes of mounting waste. KAB downplayed industry's role in despoiling the earth, while relentlessly hammering home the message of each person's responsibility for the destruction of nature, one wrapper at a time.

While I'm all for recycling and doing my share, it would be best if industry itself started to reevaluate its output. Look at Method. They're far from perfect but at least they have a good starting point.