Chapter 5

The beach is my favorite place to go in summertime and wintertime. Every time I go to the beach I see trash and when I say trash I mean diapers, chips bags, and mostly bottles (plastic). I always told myself, "damn people are pigs; why don't they clean up after themselves?" Now, I know why our beaches are filled with plastic. It's not because of the people who visit the beach and don't clean up after themselves, it's because of our home's garbage, school's garbage, office's garbage, etc. If I ask you to jump into a trashcan, would you? Of course you wouldn't! But you do swim in the beach; well, that's almost the same thing as swimming in a trashcan. Our beaches are filled with garbage. The horrific thing is that ocean trash kills one hundred thousand marine mammals and even more seabirds. "Researchers found more than 9 percent-nearly one in ten-of the fish had plastic in their digestive tracts," wow, that's almost all; and we eat these toxic fishes (Humes 110). I hate the fact that we swim and eat our garbage. Garbage is kind of like recycling, because we throw it out, it goes in the ocean, then fishes eat it, finally it comes back to us because we eat those fishes! Sounds terrible to me, that is why we must do something about it!

365 Days of Trash

This article made me feel guilty, because he made a difference and he is only ONE person. If he can do it, why can't I? It encouraged me to think twice before buying and wasting something. I was impressed on how little his garbage was end of the year (28.5 pounds) and the average person's is 1,600 pounds annually. I found this article education, because I learned something new today. I never knew that we had trash museums in U.S.A where hoarders can donate their garbage. I agree with Dave's dad, I too had no idea that there was so much trash!

Chapter 4

After reading this chapter I came to the conclusion that working in the trash industry can be a great job. It seems like trash is never ending and David Steiner is very happy about his job. Garbage companies are encouraging people to waste more and more. They say they are doing good for our environment by dumping it in landfills, but in reality they make money from our trash. Even the government and media are always telling us to buy more and waste more. I find it very annoying how even the government is brainwashing us! How could they not care about the environment and just care for themselves; after all they live in here too!? Just like the CEO said there will always be trash, if we citizens don't do anything to prevent it and keep our environment healthy then the landfill workers will continue to manipulate us!

The Joy of Garbage

The article "The Joy of Garbage" by Justine Parkin discusses the effect our trash has on us and the environment. It never occurred to me that I waste 4.4 pounds a day; I always thought I barely even throw trash. We waste more than we even realize it! To many the "green" movement is a new law, but in reality it has always been there. When students interviewed people who were at least a generation older than them, they realized that recycling is not new. Well, now we recycle because it is good for our environment, but years ago people recycled out of necessity. Also we make more than we need, as a result people buy more and waste more.

Humes interview

Wow! This interview made me have a better picture of Garbology. It made me understand more clearly. I was impressed when I read that our trash can power 70,000 homes. What really grabbed my interest was that some of the famous places today such as; Wall Street was built on a landfill. In my opinion its great that we use our trash to get electricity. I also like the idea that we built buildings on top of landfills, because the landfills we don't use anymore won't take up extra space. However, building on top of landfills can have its downside, such as; catching on fire due to methane. I never have imagined that our trash can cause methane it truly is amazing. In the book I read about the seagulls, but I didn't know that workers actually use remote control planes and fireworks to get rid of them. What really annoyed me is that because of us fish eat plankton then bigger fishes eat the smaller fishes who eat plankton and we eat the bigger fishes. Why would innocent fishes eat our plastic? For the people who don't care about animals, they should at least care about themselves, because eating fish that eats plastic can harm us too. This interview really educated me about the ocean! I remember many times I played with the sand and saw pretty colorful things looking like shells, but now I know that they weren't shells they were PLASTIC! We really need to put a stop to this!

Chapter 3

       In chapter three Humes continues talking about landfills and the overflowing of trash. Humes also introduces his audience a new topic. He explains how plastic became a vast issue today. Some plastic bags fly in the air and end up in our oceans and rivers. Who wants to go for a swim in a beach filled with bags and fishes trapped in the bags? A large amount of humans feed off fishes daily, now what would happen if our fishes begin to extinct, because they get trapped in our plastic bags? Plastic is not degradable, as a result it will be on the planet Earth forever. We cannot destroy it, so one day we will be drowned in our own plastics. Coca-Cola is a great example, a person uses fifty gallons of Coca Cola annually; which is equivalent to 160 billion soda cans hauled to the curb each year (Humes). The more plastic we use/make the more we trash our cities and live in trash!
       Robert Bennett's story truly alarmed me. I never even imagined that our trash can even contain a human body, wow! I cannot believe that Bennett's murderer got away for so many years, because he threw the body in the trash can; in which Bennett's body is still buried in our landfill today. Chapter three also brought the true meaning of the American dream to my attention. I always thought that the American dream is to have a better life, but Garbology proved me that there is much more to it than we citizens are aware of. We do not realize that we are brain washed with all the propaganda. Lippincott believed in spending more causes our economy to prosper. TV advertisements persuade Americans to waste a lot of great things to buy better things (Humes).  I agree with Packard, he claimed that the more we buy the more trash we have. Why would we allow media to control us and make us buy new stuff when we already have what we need?

Chapter 2

I enjoyed reading chapter two, because it talked about our country's garbage history. The famous New York, used to be a "city of garbage." I was really upset at City Hall for not making laws about garbage until after its citizens caught diseases such as; Cholera. When Humes talked about piggeries I was speechless, "More than two hundred towns...built piggeries where raw garbage served as the feed..." (Humes 41). I cannot believe people fed pigs with garbage just to get rid of the waste! Finally, George E. Waring cleaned up the trashy cities. He received help from his army which earned the nickname, "White Wings." Thanks to White Wings we now live in a clean city, but we still need to come up with new ideas to reduce trash or a better solution of destroying trash! 

Chapter 1

Garbology really changed my perspective on throwing trash carelessly. In chapter one I learned where the trash goes after we throw it in the huge trash bin. Puente Hills caries 130 million tons of garbage only from Los Angeles, wow, that's a lot! I cannot imagine how much we humans waste without even acknowledging it. Since, now I am educated about garbage and our environment, I find it extremely annoying that for all these years we have not come up with a solution. I was amazed to know that Greeks came up with the first anti-littler campaign, "...a law forbidding disposal of garbage within one mile of the city limits, initiating the world's first anti-litter campaign" (Humes, 29). Greeks passed this law, because the country drowned in its own garbage. One thing that disappointed me was that Europe didn't pass anti-litter laws until after many citizens suffered the Black Death! Even though I was a little annoyed and disappointed, I still found one thing that really grabbed my attention! I was really amazed by Big Mike's BOMAG, it is a machine that crashes tons of waste in Puente Hills, it is still used today. 

Finally made a blog