I like my clutter. It keeps me anchored in the real world whenever I'm in danger of disappearing into the Ivory Tower of esoteric debate. Of course the clutter sometimes overwhelms me, at which point it becomes trash. I like my trash. I like the idea that I can leave it outside the house and someone will pick it up and take it away and fling it into a hole in the ground and cover it up. It's the natural order of things.
The Journal Gazette's Sunday Perspective section yesterday disagrees with me on this point. (To be truthful, most people probably do, but seldom spell it out so plainly.) We are being, well, wasteful, because we dump 4,000 tons of trash a day at the municipal landfill, says a lengthy piece, and the number of people recycling is dropping. This is bad because:
The 160 acres at the National Serv-All landfill, where Fort Wayne dumps its trash, will be full in 2006. The company's recently approved 180-acre expansion is expected to last 25 to 30 years. In about 25 years, landfill space in Fort Wayne and throughout Indiana will be at a premium. Hoosiers will be forced to join their East Coast compatriots in paying outrageous sums of money to bribe other communities into taking out the garbage. The price to get rid of garbage will explode, and by then our bad habits of throwing trash away instead of recycling will be even more firmly set.
I don't think so. This isn't New Jersey. Most places in the country have plenty of available space for landfills, and this is one of them. We can keep digging holes and filling them up until our great, great grandchildren run out of clutter. But recycling has become almost a religion, despite the fact that it often costs more (to taxpayers) than simple disposal and can even harm the environment more. Count me an agnostic.
Recyling is done by people trapped on a desert island or otherwise needing to husband everything they have. I worry about the mindset of people who insist we are at the point where we need to do that.
Soylent Green is people!
