The Landfill and Recycling
Wandile Maseko
I've given myself a great gift this year; call it a field trip, if you like, but I took myself to my town's landfill and had my eyes opened for the first time. Maybe the concept of someone reaching their 40s and still not being contentious of recycling is one that sounds far-fetched, well, it's the truth. I didn't grow up imagining the Earth covered in over-flowing landfills, piles and piles of garbage as high as the tallest building that was not my experience. But because the idea of leaving too much waste for the Earth to handle is a bitter reality today, I've begun to educate myself.
Seeing, with my own eyes, the area designated for my community's left overs was like a big slap of reality. I was finally able to comprehend the thought; "if I'm not the only one throwing things away carelessly, and if others are doing it too, this space will not last too long."
Recycling, at its best, is prevention of excess. Keeping that in mind and taking the steps to incorporate the changes into your life will further enhance the lack of waste and will make it much easier for landfills not to get so over-filled; because over-filled landfills are not a pretty sight and not what we want in our future or in the future of our children, down through the generations. Prevention of waste takes just a little forethought, and any of us are capable of that.
Keeping the environment safe from harmful chemicals
It's not something we set out to do, at the beginning of the day; the thought isn't, "Hmmm, how can I hurt the Earth today?" It probably sounds something much more like, "Gee, I need to clean today, let me reach under the cubboard and see what I have," not realizing that whatever is done with the products I use to clean, once I've cleaned, can be harmful to not only the earth itself, but any living things that may come in contact with the wash off. We live in a sterilized world, where the idea of a clean home, clean work place and clean where ever we take our children is the first order of business. But we need to stop and think about what harm we may be doing in our quest for the cleanest living area.
We need to be careful with the chemicals we have easy access to and become more responsible for what happens as the result of our choices. It really isn't all that hard to make an informed choice and help the Earth; we certainly don't want to hurt it but being irresponsible with basic cleaning products can do just that; we can end up causing great harm to the planet on which we live. Remember, it doesn't take much more than a little awareness to be an advocate for the health of the place we call home.
The prevention of excess
The idea of recycling is to reuse an item rather than toss it into the trash and have it end up filling space in a landfill, right? Here's a thought; why not have the waste in the first place? Are you with me? How can this be accomplished, you may be asking yourself, and that's good because I have a few ideas I'd like to share.
A great way to curb the surplus in a landfill is to reuse things and an easy one to do this with is the plastic bags you get to carry your groceries home in. Rather than getting the bags home, emptying the contents and putting them away and throw the used bag into the trash, think about the different things you can use that bag for; in my house all of our home-lunches are carried to and from school in reused plastic bags. We even reuse the bags over and again, until we know that nothing will stay bagged but will fall out. Just by reusing items like this will cut down greatly on the stuff that is filling up our precious space-craved landfills.
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