Trash is everywhere. It is in our homes and businesses. It blows up into trees. It washes up on shores that have never felt a footstep. It is our ongoing legacy.

Trash tells a story. Some stories are more obvious than others. For example, the multiple candy wrappers in the bin next to my desk tell a sweet, gruesome story of all the chocolate I have eaten in the last couple days (it’s Halloween, right?).

When traveling, some people connect to a place by visiting churches, touring museums, taking pictures of local landmarks, or sampling typical cuisine. For me, I am drawn compulsively to peek inside trash and recycling bins. Through the composition of the trash, I start to piece together people, place, and action.

Let’s play a little game: You look at the trash bin and guess where I was standing or what people were doing:

Ready?  Here is Photo 1:

By looking at the photo of candle stubs, you may have been able to surmise that I was standing in a church.





Specifically, I was in the Russian Orthodox Church of Wiesbaden (also known as a Greek Chapel), built between 1847 and 1855 in Germany.

Ready for another? Here is Photo 2:

By looking at this photo of multiple water bottles, you could predict I was in a place with a lot of people drinking large quantities of liquid.

Indeed, I was in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City on a hot Sunday where people strolled through the park, eating cotton candy and drinking lots of water.

Finally, I present you with Photo 3:

This may be a bit of a mystery. What are those hockey-puck-esque nuggets of yellow and brown? Terrible Frisbees? Art?

They are squashed pineapples: remains from a tasty glass of “exquisite natural pineapple juice” in the middle of a market in Mexico. Delicious!

This little anthropological exercise is not about candles, water bottles, and pineapple pulp. It’s to illustrate a simple fact: Trash is tangible. You can point to it. You can sort it, weigh it, measure it, and (if you are wired like myself) take pictures of it.

You look in the bin, and you know about the behavior.

Greenhouse gasses are vague. There are organizations, like 350.org, that link carbon dioxide with community action. There are websites that help you calculate your carbon footprint. Greenhouse gasses are important, but I don’t always make the connection between my behavior and my impact. I feel like I can fudge the numbers or make excuses. The fudge wrappers next to my desk, however, are not vague at all.

We need to get there. We need to connect the dots between our choices and consumption patterns with our impact on our natural environment. I choose to get there through talking about trash. I have met so many people that say, “I am green: I recycle.” Garbage, in my opinion, is a gateway conversation for talking about “green issues” and this thing we call “sustainability”.

Next week, we’ll explore this topic further using dog poo as an example for how to shape behavior.

Bin there, doing that,
Meredith

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