A Trashy Situation

       Every wonder what impact you will have on the world around you?  

My family of 5 produces on average 4, 30 gallon  bags of trash a week . That doesn't seem that bad , that is like  a bag every other day.   I don't have trash service ,since there is a county dumpster site 2 blocks over .  Once a week I load up our trash and go throw it into the dumpster, and never think about it again.  I have never added up how many bags that is in a year or in a life time. I have never thought about where that dumpster goes or where my weekly trash ends up.

My family has never recycled except for metal. I have seen the little symbols all over everything but have given very little thought about it ,except  Once a week  when I take our trash to the dumpster .  When  I see these people with their bags of plastic bottles and boxes of cardboard trowing it into special bins I think I should recylcle.  By the time I get back home I think , I am just 1 person, 1 little family how can I make that big a difference just by recycling.

This is my county's landfill Which happens to be 550 acres of already used and ready for more trash land.  This is  where my 208 bags of trash end up each year.   Where you can visible see paper, plastic  glass , rotting food, old clothes and half broken furniture form little mountains.  Off in the distant is beautiful rolling grass covered hills that are Beautiful to see but have a ugly truth that hides beneath.  They are nothing more than dirt covered trash piles.

Its hard to find the rights words to described what you see and feel( Lets not even talk about the smell!)  Knowing you have done nothing to help prevent this.   Standing on top of that mountain of trash all I could think about was the movie Wall-E and h0w realistic that movie now seemed to me.   Watching the heavy equipment  push mounds of trash  feeling the earth move under your feet, Its almost scary.

The ground feels like play doh, it gives and moves as the trash shifts beneath you, this is not what I imagined when I threw my trash in the dumpster.

      A big mountain of trash is not the impact I want to make in the world. This is not what I want to leave behind for my children. I know that my recycling will not make a big impact on the trash piles across America but if I start recycling now and then my 3 children will recycle and their children, it starts to add up and make a big impact.

    What impact will you leave on earth? 

All of these photos were taken by me on 7/12/2014