Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A few thoughts on garbage!

The State of Garbage (2006) article that we read for class was disturbing to me. I wondered if anyone else felt embarrassed when they read, "The estimated MSW per capita generation rates varied from South Dakota's low of .07 to Indiana's 2.1 tons/person/year." This fact also made me realize how important our project is. Even though our efforts of saving plastic bags from the landfill might just not bring us down to the desirable .07, we are still bringing awareness! It is obvious that Indiana would not be able to drop their generation rates in one large movement, it is going to take small movements, like ours, to get anywhere! I know that this project will get people thinking in many ways and enlighten other aspects of Indiana's recycling and waste.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Tori,

I was shocked when I first encountered that statistic (see blog entry on Aug. 18). In fact, a friend of mine emailed me and said that I probably read the statistic incorrectly. I wish that were true, but the grim reality is that we Hoosiers throw away A LOT of trash!

Hopefully, our project will get people to think and act quickly to reduce their waste consumption. I also hope that people realize that what they do to reduce waste matters.

Anonymous said...

Tori, I'm glad you brought this up. I found those statistics disturbing also. IT was also amazing how much trash is imported and exported from state to state! I'm of the opinion that each state should have to keep their own trash. If they created it, they need to deal with it. But unfortunately, I know it doesn't work that way. We might want to compile some of the major statistics from that report and put them on posterboard or something just as a visual to make people realize just how much trash they are throwing away.