Waste Plot

Okay, finally getting started on a new environment plot thing. Hopefully this one won't be too long.

This one's talking about Waste.
We waste a heckuvalot.
Waaaaaay more than we need to.
We buy sturdy cardboard and metal cylinders for just a few fake potato chips. Toys you buy at the store are encased in a veritable fortress of plastic. You get disposable Styrofoam cups at the coffee shop. And all of these things end up in the trash. And hey, at least you didn't litter. That's good.
But I've got news for you, people.
the garbage can is not the end of the line for that styrooam cup.
Fleets of garbage trucks have to come and haul all that krayp away to the dump.
And there a few things might happen to it. It might get buried of burned. In Japan they burn some stuff. In America they bury it.
Neither is a good solution.
Some stuff like paper isn't too bad to burn. But burning anything releases stuff into the air. And burning some things, like plastic, releases really nasty stuff into the air. But sometimes burning trash is used to generate energy, so that's something, at least.
Burying trash isn't much better. Obviously, it creates massive landfills (which no one wants near their homes). But the conditions in the landfills are such that the stuff inside never actually decomposes. You could find intact newspapers from when the landfills were first started. That trash isn't going anywhere.
Landfills often release methane gas. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon (though fortunately less plentiful). If landfills decided to put in the money and effort, they could collect this methane gas to burn for energy. But they usually don't.
But a bigger problem is leaching. Landfills generally have a layer of plastic (or something) beneath them to catch all of the nasty juices that drip off of all our trash. But those layers of plastic are underground, buried beneath mounds of trash. If there's a hole, no one would know. So all that nasty stuff leaches out of the landfills and into our ground water. This is one reason why it's really important to keep electronics and other toxic stuff (paint, oil, ex) out of the trash. Recycle everything you can, and dispose of everything else in proper ways.
Now on to recycling. Recycling is good. You want to recycle. A lot of garbage could be avoided if everyone recycled what needed to be recycled. Especially plastic.
Plastic is nasty stuff. So is styrofoam. That stuff never really decomposes. At least, not in any time that humans will see it. It just breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces and often ends up in oceans. Out in the middle of the ocean, there are huge patches of water where the plastic gathers. Little animals eat the plastic. And then bigger things eat those little animals that are full of plastic. So, plastic (along with other chemicals) build up in the bodies of bigger sea animals. Bigger pieces of plastic can entangle animals and strangle them, or drown them. Some animals think plastic looks like their food, so they eat it. Baby birds that are fed plastic can die of starvation because their stomachs get filled with bottle caps and garbage.
Keep your plastic in the recycling bin, where it belongs.
But recycling doesn't fix everything.
For example, disposable plastic water bottles. For the sake of every god in every culture, DON'T USE THEM! (Unless you live in a country with unreliable tap water). In America, tap water is actually more highly regulated than bottled water. So buy a reusable water bottle, and get a water filter.
Because when you recycle that plastic bottle, it does NOT go to making new bottles. It goes to making other stuff. So, they go on making new bottles of fresh plastic.
And there's a reason that the phrase "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is in the order that it is.
The first thing you should do is reduce your consumption. If you don't need to buy that giant tube with a few pringles in it, then don't.
Reuse is second. Instead of throwing away that paper bag, use it for something else first.
Recycle is the last option after all of these. A good thing to do, but not the only thing you should be thinking about.

So, avoid products that have too much packaging. Don't throw away things that you can still use. And recycle everything that you can.

Well, that wasn't as quick and simple as I'd hoped. That figures. No wonder I've been avoiding these. @_@

So, using this in a story.
Pollution and litter are easy ways to go.
Maybe people live on landfills because there's no space anywhere else. Landfills would make excellent scavenging ground for people that are desperate. A lot of good stuff gets thrown away.
Maybe people use all the plastic floating out in the ocean to make a floating island to live on.
Yeah, I don't have many ideas this time. My brain is still stuck in "trash mode." I'll let you use your imaginations, and I'll add more ideas if I think of them.

Who's used this idea?
Ponyo
Future Boy Conan