Garbology Chapter 4

Chapter 4 was very interesting to me , there were many great facts to help me with the upcoming essay. For example, David Steiner is a very good person to use to explain how trash can be very important since he is CEO for a trash company. To many it can be a career and I must say, it seems to be a very stable one at that. They were looking for a solution to how trash can be high in value on page 84. The part that I thought was smart was taking out the valuable things from the item and then just throwing away the rest. I feel as if that will decrease the amount of trash being thrown away and will give Puente Hills more time to stay open. I feel that Humes was trying to explain to his readers that these trash companies are doing everything they can to make people throw trash away since they are receiving money, stable money. It seems like a absurd cycle. The government and media brainwash the people to buy, buy, buy and then those consumers throw away their trash into the trash company, giving them money, which then goes back to the government, I think they will keep doing so as it is the cycle of dirty,toxic money. It was sad to read that Puente Hills consumed most of the money saved up for a different solution to the trash nightmare.

Review of "Museum of Trash"

This article was very easy to understand which in many ways, made me more interested. Dave seemed very passionate and dedicated to his experiment, 365 Days of Trash. I found it very humorous that he had caught the museums' attention by keeping all his trash for a year, now he gets his own exhibit! The fascinating part was, as he was doing his experiment, he only used 28. 5 pounds of trash that year. An average person wastes 4.5 pounds of trash in one day, so Dave did great! Although this article was not long, there were a lot of interesting events for Dave. I actually would love to see a museum of trash or even visit Puente Hills! It is a definite eye opener to how cluttered and toxic our world really is.

Review of "Story of Stuff" video

This article was a real eye opener! The video was so interesting and had so much information i knew very little about. The reality of throwing away our trash. This video reminded me of Garbology in so many ways. The very first part of the video really caught my attention, I love they used drawings because it made me understand way more then just imagining it. The fact that we used 1/3 of our natural resources already is such a surprising fact! It makes me wonder what will happen in a few more decades. The toxic she spoke about in the video really fascinated me, the fact that we use chemicals on everything we own even our pillows, which can be danger to our health and effect our brains, seems unnecessary to me. There is way more toxins then I thought, in the air and on everything we touch. When she spoke about how even breast milk is toxic, I began to realize how intoxicating our environment really is. It's sad how much toxins we have in our body from these factories and fumes in the air. This video was very helpful to me and I took a lot from it. I mean the fact that we use 4.5 pounds of garbage daily in absolutely ridiculous! The part that really intrigued me was when she explained how our trash cycle could end and we can begin to reuse and detoxify everything from plastic bags to our environment just by never throwing away our trash in the landfills such as Puente Hills.

Edward Humes Garabolgy Interview

This was very helpful into understanding the book a little better because he explains how he felt about the trash and well it is easier to read it when he is actually speaking. I can tell he is very passionate about garbage and how to end this endless nightmare of trash. Although he spoke about thing I have not read yet, I understood him very well. I found it sadly fascinating that the trash goes in the ocean too and it is harming the food chain. He explains how they have found plastic in the fish that eat the plankton type organism which is eating the plastic from what we throw about in our garbage. As I read on I started to freak out thinking about when I go have sushi...am I eating the fish that was eating the plastic? Then I read on and they were talking about how that was the fear for a lot of people. I also learned about Nurdle which is basically plastic of some sort but it can be the texture of fluid. They spoke about how you could see it as the beach in the sand. I started to ponder about the times i found pieces of plastic that i thought was a seashell, turns out its nurdle coming from the ocean. It is sad to think that our oceans are being filled with plastic. Humes explained that plastic was actually a way of reusing and was made to last forever and now it is one of the highest trash items in landfills. It has really opened by eyes to things I never even thought of that effect my life and everyone else's.

Garbology Chapter 3

   Chapter 3 of Garbology was very interesting, I love that in this chapter it got into detail about the different ways of getting rid of the trash such as the pigs. They used the pigs as a tool to eat the garbage which seemed like a great idea but as I was reading that part of the chapter, I kept thinking to myself, how is this going to last? Isn't this harming the pigs? Wouldn't this effect not only the pigs health but our health too? As I kept reading I was soon to find out that it was harming us, the humans, just as much as the pigs. The zoology chief, Willard H. Wright was explaining how most of the population was feeding the pigs their trash. Swine flu began to grow as did other diseases because the meat of the pigs were in fact toxic. By keeping the pig trash eating idea they thought they would cook the pig very well before selling and buying the pig but as it turns out money became a huge factor. Then again isn't it always a big factor. I got so tired of reading all these different ideas to benefit the lessening of our trash being cut out or even banned by insufficient funds. It aggravates me to think that we as Americans make millions of billions of dollars on the "new" products out there but we can't save money to find an easy way to get rid of trash. In my opinion I think that Humes is trying to state exactly that. He writes about all these ideas that we have thought of but cut out because of financial matters. Is he trying to say that we should just follow through with one and just give up the money? Even if I am way off of what he is trying to state in some weird way I feel as if my opinion can be right in some sort. He states also in chapter 3 how the incinerators became too expensive as well, and well that one seems understandable to shut down due to heavy effect on our fragile environment. I learned a lot in this chapter and I am beginning to grow stronger on my on voice of the problem of trash.    

Garbology Chapter 2

   Chapter two begins with New York and how they basically turned the city into a dump before landfills of trash were created. I find it humorous that New York was known as the pigs, now it is one of the most popular states out there. It was vile to find out that the sea men would smell the trash from miles and miles away, goes to show how filthy it was there. Then health issues rose and finally they came to their senses that trash is the number one issue. They began to collect the trash and recycle which would take away some of the filth off the streets, at least. The landfills were not made like the Puente Hills it was a opened spaced bug infested land. There were so many problems with the health codes and finical matters, making it difficult to clean up NYC tot he fullest. Although NYC was not the only city to be filled with trash and filth, it was one of the worst. Why not burn the trash? That seemed like such a great idea right? well, thats what I thought until I read about dangerous and poisonous the fumes were.The Smokey Joes as they were called added so much pollution making the environment cancerous and horrifyingly dangerous.Doing so would not better the trash problem. It added problems. What other ways are their to get rid of all this trash?

Garbology Chapter 1

   In chapter one we learn about Puente Hills landfill which was built by Mike Speiser for the most part. Puente Hills has become LA's trash can having over 130 million tons of trash. It was very surprising to find out how much trash is actually thrown away. They use the BOMAG which is basically used to crush the trash and turned into piles of trash which look like mountains. It's hard to grasp the idea that people like you and me are the reason we need to use BOMAG and why Puente Hills is wasted as dump instead of something more important. It is horrifying to imagine hundreds of thousands of dirty diapers and rotting foods all stuck in one place and adds by the second. The fact that this has been a ongoing issue for decades is what annoys me. With all the technology and new inventions out there why is it so difficult to get rid of trash? Why is it that the one thing that has a huge impact on the environment is not given the attention it needs. The scariest part to me was reading about how one day all this trash could collapse on us. How can something this big not register into my head every single time I would throw away an item, it was being thrown into Puente Hills landfill.

Garbology Intro

   Although garbage is not what most are intrigued by, it has become very fascinating me. The fact that people have died because of their own trash really goes to show how much trash can impact your life. There can be a vary of arguments about trash. One can say that hoarding is wrong and that the trash should be thrown away but then another says by throwing items, it is waste as it can be used again. I was confused until one part of the book made me understand the truth. It was in the intro and it basically said that all people are considered hoarders some to landfills and others to their homes. We all throw things away but what was amazingly horrifying to me was how much exactly. In chapter one, it is said that there is 12,000 tons of trash a day! Either way we are all hoarders. Americans alone throw away around 389.5 million tons of trash and is still going. Day by day it just adds and adds. I also found it interesting to read about Zhang Yin who was China's first woman billionaire. The humorous part was it was that those billions of dollars started from a paper company who would take America's thrown out pieces of paper send it to China and then China would turn it into cardboard boxes thatwere  shipped to America, then America would throw it away again. It was like a money cycle. Another way of making money out of trash was Harvard's yard sales which was made up of abandoned items in the dorms of the students. It is very successful and seems like a great way to get rid of trash but my question is...aren't all the items in that yard sale going to be thrown into a landfill in a few years anyways? It just seems like no matter what we do trash will always be around.

English 113a

Garbology is very educational