I’m the reason landfills are toxic!

It must sound profoundly weird to the current generation but going to the tip used to be an adventure. People of my age might remember this with fondness. Dad would announce that he was taking a run to the tip (for all the waste that hadn’t been burned in the 40-gallon drum in the backyard) and did anyone want to come? Invariably there were takers.

To paint a picture, the tip wasn’t a transfer station like today, where all our rubbish is conveniently taken away to places unknown. There was a tip face that you drove to (surrounded by a zillion seagulls) and you dumped your rubbish directly there. And, while you were there you had a good nosy around at what other people had thrown and would often return home with all sorts of goodies and projects…

It was fun! I got several bikes from the tip.

There was always a big bulldozer/loader there moving dirt over the tip face, mixing it in with the dumped rubbish.

A new normal that isn’t good

And here’s the thing that I hadn’t thought about until we attended a Waste-Free workshop last night; the rubbish we were dumping then was totally different to what goes into landfill today.  There were very few single-use items, very little made from plastic, and most things would break down in the ground.

In virtually a single generation our normal has shifted completely away from this. Landfills today are toxic and are completely sealed to ensure they don’t leach the resultant poison into the surrounding soil or groundwater. Sealing this way means no air, and therefore no natural breakdown. That rubbish we throw is rubbish for a long, long time.

A growing mound of crap

It’s not just the type of rubbish we throw, but the amount of rubbish we generate. This has grown massively in one generation. Think about how many single-use items go into landfill today that didn’t even exist only a short while back.

Single-use

Milk bottles used to be glass, and washed and reused. Now they come in plastic or some strange thing that’s based on cardboard, and the vast majority of both of these things, don’t get recycled.  

Single-use coffee cups are coated in plastic to stop them getting soggy while you drink them. This makes them unrecyclable, They go into landfill in incredible numbers, and they don’t break down readily.

The same is true of pizza boxes, and other totally recyclable items that don’t pass muster because of food contamination (when they are sorting recycling, anything that has food in or on it gets tossed).

All this goes into landfill.

Packaging

And then there is the crazy amount of packaging that simply didn’t exist back in the day. Why does everything need to do be wrapped in multiple layers of (usually plastic) packaging?  ‘It doesn’t’, is the simple answer. We’ve all survived very well over the years without plastic bags and the packaging.

Plastic, and the mountain of packaging, that we happily did without a generation ago, is a massive, massive problem. The overwhelming majority of plastic doesn’t get recycled and is incredibly slow to break down, so it’s a long-term problem.  It’s conveniently taken away, out of our sight and mind.

And I’m the cause!

I’d never thought about this, until the nice lady at the Waste Free Workshop opened my eyes and pointed out that it’s my problem, and your problem, and everybody’s problem.

I’m the cause of this she said!  I felt a little put out by that, but she’s totally right.

How did our normal shift so far so quickly? 

It’s hard to fathom, isn’t it? Back in the day, a lot of families had big vege gardens and even if they didn’t they usually had a compost bin.  Now we have the craziness of having cucumbers that are individually wrapped in plastic!  And all our left-over food gets chucked in the bin, ending up in the landfill, sealed in a cell that isn’t aerated, entombed and mummified. 

What’s worse, so much food and other gunk gets washed down the sink via insinkerators, left for the water treatment plant to skim off and then put it – you guessed it – back into the landfill.  

I think the answer to  ‘how did we move so far so quickly?’, is convenience. It’s easier now to buy stuff cheaply and toss the rest away in our wheelie bins. And you’re paying for that bin, so you might as well fill it as much as possible right? I’m totally as guilty as anyone else for doing that. But when you think about it, see where it’s going and what it’s doing, it’s a really bad practice.

Can’t I blame the government? Or someone?

Well no…  I am the person buying the stuff that’s got a massive amount of packaging, so I am the one that can do something about it.

Couldn’t I blame the council?

As was pointed out to me, and I agree, the people at the council are just people like you and me and they are doing the best they can to deal with the outcome of my choices.

So it’s simply down to me to do something about this.

I can’t wait for someone else to solve this. The power is in my hands. I need to shift my normal back to how it was just a short time ago. And the way to stop this is to reduce the amount of rubbish I’m creating and to let companies know that I don’t want everything wrapped in multiple layers of crap. It’s not necessary, and just a short while ago I coped absolutely fine without it.  And reduction IS the top of the list for solving this problem, recycling is way down the list and putting things in the landfill is at the very bottom.  It seems like our consumer culture has had us operating with this pyramid upside down for too long,

So what can we (collectively) do?

One thing!  How simple is that?  Just focus on one thing that reduces waste and make that your new normal. Pick one thing and go hard with that. It’s not about making everyone feel guilty, we’ve got here and yes, we could do with changing, but it’s too hard to do it all at once. One thing at a time.  And if we all make one change it ends up a massive change.  Choose your one thing, and once you’ve got that nailed and normal, and bedded in for a bit, choose another and go hard at that. Easy aye?

Here are some suggestions

• Plant a few veges that normally come packaged.  There’s a whole heap of rewards to gardening apart from the reduction in waste and the food, just ask Glynis, she’s totally in her happy place in our gardens. (we’re doing well here – check out our Hugelkultur)
• Compost food scraps (see Bokashi for no-smell, indoor composting).
• Try not to use single-use plastic bags…  (I’ve been really bad for forgetting the reusable bags at the supermarket, but then, epiphany, the last few times this happened I walked the trolley out to the car and loaded into our bags there. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. I even asked if I could take the hand basket out to the car and bring it back, when I didn’t have a trolley, and they were totally fine with that. At the checkout the lovely person just put my goods back in the basket after scanning, and off I went…  Simplicity).
• Here’s an easy one. Don’t use the plastic bags provided in the vege section of the supermarket. You don’t need a bag at all for veges, just put them in loose, or take a reusable bag for that. They are totally fine with this at the checkout.
• Look for some alternative brands that don’t produce so much waste and buy them instead.  There are masses of alternatives out there. And if you have to have a certain product, and they aren’t great with packaging, write and let them know that you love their product but don’t like how they package it.
• Ask for your drink to come with no straw (or straws?!).
• Use a reusable takeaway coffee cup (this is easy and has a massive affect).

Glynis and I have actually been thinking about this for a while and were happy to find at the workshop, that we were already doing many of the suggestions.  I think the biggest shock to both of us was the growing and unsustainable waste problem we’re all part of.  It really reinforced for us that we’re on the right track but also made us redouble our efforts into sustainability.  And the cool thing is we’re enjoying challenging ourselves to find better ways.  We’re absolutely not perfect and don’t always get it right, but our normal is shifting back and that feels good.