The Hidden Life Of Garbage Summary

If we can guess what happens to our garbage would we actually second guess ourselves of what we throw away and change how we throw it away? Everyone throws away trash, but we never think where is it going or what happens to it when the trash man comes and gets the trash.

As much trash as humans throw away, we probably think that all they do to it is set the trash on fire and watch it turn into ashes. In Heathers Rogers essay, “The Hidden Life of Garbage,” she talks about the hidden garbage that people do not see, what we do with our trash, and where it goes. What we are left with however, is no solution to the problem.

Rogers talks about in her essay how landfills are often put away from the public view.

Rogers states, “If people saw what happened to their waste, lived with the

Rogers gives us a closer look at the company Waste Management Inc.’s Geological Reclamation Operation and

Waste System (G.R.O.W.S) a land field outside of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, which so happens to be the largest trash can of the world. Rogers talks about in the beginning of her descriptions how the worker goes by every house and empties out their waste bin into the truck’s rear compaction unit. Rogers discusses the operations at G.R.O.W. and the methods and the order they remove the trash. One method that Rogers stated was the use of liners. “The liner is a giant underground bladder in order to prevent collecting contaminating groundwater leachate (liquid

Little Walker 2 waste)” (Rogers 190). The liners make today’s landfill much safer then what it has been before.

Setting the liners, they last about 30-50 years. Thirty years after a site is closed, the owner is no longer responsible for contamination; the public is. When a liner breaks, the company who manufactured the liner is not to blame, the public itself is.

My initial reaction reading this essay left me speechless to think what they do to our