About Garbage

I read Craig write about Garbage in the latest edition of Ridgeline.

This obsession with the immediate “unburdening” of a thing you created is common in non-Japanese contexts, but I posit: The Japanese way is the correct way. Be an adult. Own your garbage. Garbage responsibility is something we’ve long since abdicated not only to faceless cans on street corners (or just all over the street, as seems to be the case in Manhattan or Paris), but also faceless developing countries around the world. Our oceans teem with the waste from generations of averted eyes. And I believe the two — local pathologies and attendant global pathologies — are not not connected.

I found myself nodding along as I read it. Nodding along, and thinking, I wish we had this back home.

Here in Finland, in the cities you have many garbage cans around, both on the roads, near bus stops and otherwise, on trails. Sure, the density of the garbage cans is not as much as in the cities, but there are designated spots along the trail where you can dispose it off.

In India, there are two problems:

1. You do not have garbage cans everywhere.
2. If you had garbage cans, they might be over-flowing anyway.

These assume, that you don't want to throw garbage on the street, or anywhere. I have seen people laughing, and throwing plastic packs from the toy train in Shilma, as if it was nothing. I have seen mounds of garbage on the Himalayas, as if God will come down and clean it up.

We do not have pride, in ourselves, as Indians. We do not have pride in our country. We will keep our homes clean, but as soon as we step out of our homes, the entire state, country becomes our garbage can.

Anyway.

I have done this, back home and here, in Finland, where I would carry plastic wrappers or any other garbage with me, if I am not able to find a place to dispose it away. I will put it in the little pockets in my bag, for carrying bottles. I will put it away at home, or elsewhere.

The other things is about abdication, about turning our eyes away. Its as if you can't see the garbage, it does not exist! It does.

We sort our garbage. We put garbage in different cans. Plastic goes to a different place, diapers go to a different can, cardboards to a different place, organic waste goes someplace else. I don't know what happens to it after it is collected.

It should be easier to have this information. Or, we should be taught what happens to our garbage.

Garbage is not bad. We create it. We own it. What happens to it, is or rather, should be, our responsibility.