A human mind is a terrible thing to waste.  And, when you think about it waste is a terrible thing in a finite universe.  In a throwaway society we have advanced up the food chain to throwaway children if the scandals in the agencies we develop are any measure. Buying bunnies at Easter time and letting them die or puppies or kittens throughout the year and enjoying them for a while then letting them waste away through neglect seem to be hallmarks in our present society.  The need for pets parallels the need for children.  We used to use dogs for hunting and protection and cats to keep the mouse population down.  We used to have children for continuing the family line and as hands to increase the productivity of the family fortune. Today we have a problem in recognizing a child who is not pretty or talented or who lacks someone to be responsible for him or her. Many abuse their own children, this is not an activity relegated to priests or perverts.

We don’t even consider the property we amass as valuable anymore.  Most of it is throwaway too.  Containers and wrappings for new things we buy become a glut because the need is to make the products inside look better in order to entice us to buy more.  If we all, all those who are in the class owning computers, were to inventory our possessions I am quite sure that those possessions own us.  The multiplicity of things that share our living quarters need separate quarters for them to give us more living space.  Most of us do not wait until we die for the distribution of our goods.  There are times when we just simply must make room in order to live. We compulsively give away, sell in garage sales or “when in doubt, throw it out.” Simplicity vies with ownership and display.

But waste is something that we must deal with everyday.  It was written early in the last century that if visiting space rovers discovered our planet when it had worn itself out by exploiting the natural resources until only plain dirt was left, the multiplicity of bathrooms and toilets would amaze them and have them asking, why?  Of course our biological waste must go somewhere and in a population that approaches three billion we have to deal with it in other ways than simply letting it pollute the air and the water and the land.  All of our excess packaging is soon discarded along with once desired toys and have to be dealt with.  We can export it, compact it, burn it or just let it pile up.

I think that we can build mountains out of it – but that idea has been seen to be effective in the flat lands of Florida and in the meadowlands between New Jersey and New York. You can see the man-made mountains of trash that expel gases from decomposition and, perhaps, imagine fairy-lands of parks and amusement arcades or even sites for more housing developments.

I like the idea of using trash as fuel to produce power.  I like the idea of compacting it and using it as building blocks for new land out into the margins of the sea.  I like the idea of dumping it down into the tunnels we dig to extract mineral wealth but are left to trap unwary travelers.  I like the idea that someone makes a fortune to deal with it.  We pay, and increasingly so each year, for someone to come with ideas of recycling and for that I like the idea even more.

Our trash has owned us throughout history.  We can dig into the middens of earlier civilizations and learn a great deal about them because they tossed away everything into their garbage dumps.  In them we find things that cannot decay like some organic materials.  So we learn about their profligate habits and the sites of early habitation before the garbage dumps of old got too big and forced them to relocate.

One aspect of civilization is very sad, indeed.  There are communities all over the world that sit on or near the garbage dumps of affluent cities.  The people who live on them scavenge for the bits and pieces more fortunate people throw away.  These dwellers among the detritus of wealthy city folk are perhaps more fortunate than those who live on the streets or alleys in the cities.

Our civilizations are so fixed today that we have to export, burn, and compact or recycle our wastes or they will soon overwhelm us and force us into space to leave them behind.