Our Wasteful Civilization Right Outside My Door

 

Every few days someone who doesn't live in the building drops their oversized trash by our dumpster that sits beside University Avenue. I knocked it apart with an axe and will reuse some of the wood, so I don't have to pay for whatever inconsiderate fools left it in our garbage.

Our apartment through a trick of creative pricing charges us for garbage and lawn care. These are costs that are usually hidden within the price of rent, but in the competitive market of Williston, many of the Orwellian management companies have turned to this trick as a way to advertise cheaper rent, while moving some of the costs as extras that are tacked on later.

Having spent most of my life as a renter, this is the first time I have had to pay these extras up and above the rent. I am normally fully aware of the wasteful mountains of trash and over watering of grass that is the hallmark of our American civilization, but having to pay for the human waste of wasteful humans has made me even more aware. Now, I not only get to pay for wasteful lawn care and trash handling indirectly in my tax dollars, but twice as an add on to rent, paying for other peoples bad choices.

This is the second bed I have knocked apart in as many weeks and I will repurpose the slats as raised garden bed wood. I have built a shop in my garage with stuff left in the trash. The carcass of an expensive five hundred dollar grill with its durable casters topped with boards from an old dresser make a rolling workbench better than anything I could buy. The challenge of repurposing other people's junk is a constant joy of mine and a personal challenge to buck the trend of waste going into a landfill where I and everyone else will have to pay for it forever.  Not only do I get to pay for every piece of trash as an add no to my rent, I indirectly pay for it to be carted away and landfilled until the end of time.

There are so many things like metals and wood that should never go into a landfill because they are universally recyclable.  In addition, organic wastes like food that could be composted, not only take up costly landfill space, but have the added bonus of creating that powerful greenhouse gas methane. Some larger urban places have systems that reclaim much of this detritus, but here it is financially unfeasible. It is only unfeasible because we have been socialized to think that we can just throw endless things away without a second thought to their long life as trash. We need a new way of looking at and reclaiming much of what we throw as resource and not waste. I take out my anger at a system that allows such waste by knocking things apart with a hammer or zipping them apart with a drill as a sort of rage against the machine of waste we are all trapped inside. I could easily afford to buy the things I make, but then I would be part of the system and not bucking it. I like going up river.

    The settings on these sprinklers could be dialed down to avoid this waste and still have a green lawn. But why do we need a green lawn just for dogs to crap in? Why is waste an American value that people don't question?
 

The next category of waste is our uber green, dog poop stained lawn that gets watered three times a day with much of the water running down the drain. Processed water that I get to pay for twice indirectly in tax dollars and directly though the extra fees charged by our apartment. Again, we have been socialized to believe that having endless water means we should use endless water. 

So each day I awake to the sound of sprinklers wasting water and walk by a dumpster filled with needless trash on the way to work. If we want a sustainable future, we need to trim all this unsustainable fat from the putrefying carcass of a system that by the sheer weight of its wastefulness is making us broke and wrecking the planet.