Garbage is Like Porn

Some thoughts on garbage, the proposed trash transfer station and the new recycling bins in St. Louis South County

1. Garbage is like porn, for some it is dirty and for others it is a living. Both are hard to define. Most don’t want to see it, others look for it.

2. A trash man/woman makes as much in salary as a high school teacher.

3. The new recycling bins are really causing us to recycle far more than ever before. Actually, we now have more volume in recyclables than garbage for the landfill. I’m finding I can recycle most of everything that comes into our house. Usually, the brown bin is overflowing at the once a week pickup.

4. Paper is the largest single item in landfills. What a waste of trees, money and power.

5. Many diseases come from the waste bacteria found on garbage. So does this mean that Fred Weber will have a transfer station where this can leech into the ground water and into the Meramec? What about the toxic fumes and chemicals known to be produced in piles of trash?

6. In the middle ages, the bubonic plague was passed along by rats, who met up and bred in garbage dumps all over Europe.

7. An American citizen throws away 5x more trash than the average person in India.

8. Trash that deteriorates underground forms methane gas that can be harvested to use as fuel.

9. Recycling ramped up during World War II to make many army supplies.

10. In 1934 the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed dumping in harbors and oceans.