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First I will summarize an excerpt out of Heather Roger's essay, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage published in 2005. Second I will summarize Lars Eighner essay On Dumpster Diving published in 1995. Our government needs to immediately enforce a set of strict standardized laws that carefully regulate and monitor the disposal of todays and more importantly tomorrow trash. I will argue that this is necessary for large corporations and businesses to deduce their consumption. Finally I will argue that we need to educate the public about the importance and need to restrict our consumption to secure our future.
Heather Roger's essay Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage offers a compelling outlook on society’s excessive and uneconomical mass-production of goods (585). Rogers explains the process in which our garbage and waste are collected, processed, and discarded (Roger 585). From your kitchen, to the curb, then into collection trucks, to the processing unit, where they separate, recycle, burn, compact, and deposit your garbage in our Earth (Roger 585). Roger quotes “… Dumps are comprised of a series of earth covered cells” (Rogers 586). Landfills have used “Cells” to burry trash for decades and today’s cells are lined with a special material preventing the trash from leaking into the ground and rainwater (Roger 586). A cell can be up to 100 acres across and up to hundred feet deep (586). It takes years to fill a cell and after the cell is full it is “capped” and covered over with several feet of dirt (586-587).
Not all trash finds its way to a landfill. I have acquired amazing treasures: perfectly good furniture and toys from curbsides and Dumpsters. My Grandfather always said “one man’s trash is another man’s treasu...
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...and greatest” mentality. Consumers throw away perfectly good food, electronics, etc. Society has conditioned to think objects and materials show wealth and stature. We are raised to except trash and garbage as anything that is be out dated, or slightly imperfect. High standards and expectations from relaters and consumers force us to buy excessively. If you don’t acquire these fancy popular gadgets then you are not living the normal state of living, giving the impression you can’t afford or poor. If one lacks the newest and coolest phone or gadget they are looked down on. This mentality is extremely toxic to our pockets and society. In conclusion it is crucial that we implement less damaging and toxic waste management disposal system.
Works Cited
Rosa Allfred and Paul Eschholz. Models for Writers: Short Essays for composition. 10th ed. Boston: Beford/87
I agree with his assessment about society’s throw away mentality due to the fact that I have seen it myself first hand. Recently I helped my sister move out of her dorm room at NAU and I was horrified to see all the things and edible food she was just dumping and what was worse, she wasn’t the only one. All of the kids were getting rid of perfectly good items in the dumpster, so it’s no wonder that dumpsters near college campuses are one of Eighner’s favorite places to scavenge. In his article on page 3, Eighner elaborates on student’s wasteful habits, “but in the case of discards from student apartments, the answer may be that the item was discarded through carelessness, ignorance or wastefulness.” I believe agree with Eighner that some people have a pack rat mentality while others just throw it away. My parents are a good example of this and I think it has something to do with the way that they were raised. My mom is a pack rat, holding on to everything as long as possible and giving away to charity what she doesn’t want anymore. She squeezes every last drop out of a toothpaste tube or a shampoo bottle, while my dad will throw it away half empty. My mom was raised in a single parent household, where money was tight and you used what you had… my dad however, was raised in a more affluent home and money flowed more freely. In fact, my mom does her own dumpster diving fairly regularly in our garbage can by rescuing stuff out of the garbage that my dad has thrown away, including belts, pants, shirts and hardly worn tennis shoes. She doesn’t keep the goods, but instead gives it to Goodwill or the church clothing drive. My dad is her antithesis and is definitely part of the throw-away society. My dad has little sentiment attached to stuff and like Eichner mentioned on page 6, “knows there is plenty more where what we came from.” After reflecting on
The author, Lars Eighner explains in his informative narrative, “On Dumpster Diving” the lifestyle of living out of a dumpster. Eighner describes the necessary steps to effectively scavenge through dumpsters based on his own anecdotes as he began dumpster diving a year before he became homeless. The lessons he learned from being a dumpster diver was in being complacent to only grab what he needs and not what he wants, because in the end all those things will go to waste. Eighner shares his ideas mainly towards two direct audiences. One of them is directed to people who are dumpster divers themselves, and the other, to individuals who are unaware of how much trash we throw away and waste. However, the author does more than direct how much trash
This case analyzes situation described in the Harvard Business Review article about EnClean located at: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=794115
“On Dumpster Diving,” is a descriptive essay written by Lars Eighner in which he describes some aspects of his life rummaging through the dumpsters in a small town, in search of food and basic necessities. Throughout his essay, Eighner constantly reminds the reader that most people view dumpster diving with disgust, and yet his tone indicates that he feels proud of his scavenging skills, how he can get perfectly good things that are thrown out. Furthermore, he goes on to explain in detail this lifestyle, which he refers to as“scavenging” and when doing so he makes it seem as if it were a just profession.
This essay's structure is based on the quote "beginning with the practical art of Dumpster diving and presiding to the abstract" (379). Eighner begins with an informative tone to explain the foods to eat and avoid, the stages Dumpster divers go through, and label the places where divers are most successful. The "abstract" part of the quote talks about the ideas and thoughts he gathered from his experiences as a homeless person. This satire on people's wastefulness transitions into a more critical tone when he critiques society for their obsession for materialistic objects and their wasteful nature.
Lars Eighner’s essay “On Dumpster Diving” describes his experience of being a Dumpster scavenger. Eighner began his Dumpster diving about one year before he became homeless. Since he needed to support living with his dog, Lizbeth, he not only ran out of his savings but also had to spend his infrequent income on rent. Therefore, he had to obtain and satisfy his daily necessities from the Dumpsters. During his experience as a scavenger, he gained a lot of knowledge from the art of Dumpster diving. He had enhanced his ability in distinguishing what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. Every time he found something in Dumpsters, he always asked himself,“why was this discarded?” He figured out what was a good time to find fresh food, like pizza, and
The majority of people waste food on a daily basis. In fact, in the U.S. alone there is an estimate that over half of the food produced goes uneaten; meanwhile there are people who are in need of food, and it ultimately goes to waste (Dockterman). For example, in his essay, “On Dumpster Diving,” author Lars Eighner writes about his experiences of dumpster diving with his pet dog, during his years of homelessness. According to Eighner, much of the food and materials he came across in the dumpsters were in usable shape, and many items were new. Clearly there needs to be a change in American food waste, in current and, hopefully not so much in, future generations. In order to bring about change in this misuse of food, Americans need to be conscious
Thesis: The author argues that “trash is a dynamic category” (p5) and “that nothing is inherently trash” (p5). The author conveys that in the 19th century, there was little to no trash, because everything from rags to bones was reused, but as times changed, the population grew, and there were more people deciding they didn’t have any more
Rosa, Alfred F., and Paul A. Eschholz. Models for writers : short essays for composition.
Not recycling can be and is very unbeneficial and can lead to things like this. 2 tons of recyclable things are not recycled.Instead they are sent to landfills. Those things include paper, plastic, and more. Plastic can be in those landfills for 550 years. So, if anybody throws away a piece of plastic it might
Every day it grows, every minute more is produced, overtime this could cause problems if certain people do not do their jobs. This subject is trash, it grows every day, every minute more is produced, and if trash-men do not pick up the trash that is produced and clean it up then it could cause some problems. Who wants to be a trash-man? Who wants to be the one to pick the trash up, that others produce? Ladies and gentlemen, we are running out of trash service workers. We need more workers in the field of sanitation services because they keep the world we live in trash free. If most people think that being a trash-man is gross and that if you are trash-man you are lower class, or considered the uneducated because you are simply a trash-man. So in the paper I could let people know a little more about what a trash-man does then they might think about doing it or change their mind about it being gross.
In some small town in the vastness of the United States, a midnight-black van is arriving, carrying curiously well-dressed passengers, who have only one goal; To make sure the Earth is maintained for the next generation, and people take responsibility for the waste and refuse their making right now. Somewhere in a sleepy town in the USA it’s recycling day.
Disposal of trash or waste or garbage however you call it is critical in society today with federal, state, and local laws in place to ensure the health and safety of citizens and protect and conserve the environment. The future of our planet is at stake from decades of neglect and misuse of our resources and we must do all that we can to protect and preserve it. Reading and researching has renewed my sense of environmentalism and it starts in my home by recycling, reusing and properly disposing of trash.
About 27 percent of the trash is recycled, 16 percent is burned, and 57 percent is buried in landfills. A landfill by definition is a carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is isolated from the surrounding environment. This isolation is made possible with a bottom liner and covering of soil. Most landfills use a synthetic plastic liner to isolate the trash from the environment. In a landfill, not all of the land is used for dumping trash. Some areas are used for runoff collecti...
While walking through the park last Sunday, I observed a shocking scene. There are two cans: one for recycling and one for trash. The recycling receptacle had only an empty Dr. Pepper can and a few used Ozarka water bottles. On the other hand, the trash can had a plethora of half eaten meals, wrappers, banana peels and disgustingly even bottles, cans, newspapers and plastics that could have been recycled. Because people do not understand or do not care to understand about conserving our resources, many reusable items are being put in landfills when recycling these items could help save the environment.