Oh The Beautiful Mountains

Sometimes I wonder if Kare and I are the only people thinking about this stuff. Doesn’t everyone think about mountains of trash blocking the sun like so many sky scrapers stretched out over the horizon? The smell would be so strong you wouldn’t be able to wash it off.  Everyone would wear filter masks to keep from breathing in the toxic fumes. We don’t really know how long it will be until this happens but isn’t that the direction we are headed in?

The trash just keeps piling up. I read a news story about Naples, Italy where the trash is pouring into the streets because they have run out of space to put it all. The landfills have been closed and declared full. Prime Minister Berlusconi has said he will use military force to open a new landfill. He is doing this because people are taking to the streets in protest of the landfill being put in their back yards.

I keep thinking about the whole "too late to go back" thing. Even though we may never see this happen in our lifetimes here in the U.S. our children very well could and at this rate our grandchildren definitely will.

If we just take a minute to think of how many things we throw away in a single day it’s scary. I mean everything, not just the things at home but also all the things at work. How about all those Big Mac boxes and double cheeseburger wrappers we throw away when we stop at our favorite fast food place for lunch? All of these things just magically disappear once we place them in the trash. We need to stop and think about where all this trash ends up. If we don’t, it might be in your back yards sooner than you think.

I think we should support a campaign to lower the amount of packaging we consume. We can show these corporations that we don’t need all of this extra packaging.

Here is a great website from the University of Florida that talks more about packaging and what we can do to help.