Human stuff

So this book I'm currently reading is called "What We Leave Behind".. Let me clarify.. very different than the book "Left Behind" although there may be similarities in the message of leaving unwanted things behind. Not sure. Okay that was sarcastic but its true. Anyways, What we leave behind is symbolic of our life path. For example, If I leave behind a garden, I am leaving behind something useful to others. If I leave an economic disaster behind, like what many so called leaders choose to do, then I am leaving a burden behind. So far, I just finished the chapter called "Waste". Well what is Waste exactly? Waste to one person or one being might be a livelihood to another. Derrick the author talks about pooping in his yard to return the nutrients back to the soil. He says that the soil and the decomposers need this to return to the earth. At first, its a bit disconcerting to read the details about a pooping episode (or many should I say). But once you push back your childish Kindergartner that hears the word poop and says "EWE!", its easy to see how this really does make sense. We eat plants, plants take in the nutrients, we poop out stuff and it doesn't go back to the plants, it gets incinerated and in some cases, it might get dehydrated at the waste treatment plant and sent back to use as farming. If it gets sent back to plants, it takes a rainfall to decompose it back into the ground and the plants will be happier because of it. Which brings me naturally to my next thought.. So we are everything on earth.. We are mineral, we are rock, we are plants, we are everything. Then how did we get so disconnected from the earth? According to this author, our trash in the last century has gone from 92 pounds of trash per person per year to 1,242 lbs of trash per person per year. Clearly there is something wrong with this picture. People in Orange County are responsible for creating the most amount of trash per person per day (11lbs). This is a little embarrassing. Why have we created more trash? Because we believe as a society that everything should be boxed and wrapped in a million things. The idea of something being "new" means its more valuable and the only way to make it look really new is to box it up and package it. Can you imagine if you went to go buy your ipod at an apple store and the dude handed you a brand new ipod and said "Open your hands" and then threw in the headphones and the charger right into your hands. You would have some thoughts as to whether it were new or not and if you were buying it as a gift, how could you prove to the person you were getting it for that you weren't being cheap and actually bought it new. This has something to do with it. I wonder how we will change our behavior. I am guilty of forgetting to bring my own canvas bags to the grocery store. I contribute to the waste as well. Maybe we just need to completely ban unnecessary packaging. Maybe if I turned up at a grocery store and forgot my canvas bag and the grocer told me that they weren't handing out any or even selling any plastic bags anymore, carrying things out to the car in loads, separately, just one time might teach me a lesson. Just as we know we have to take time to charge our cell phones or they will die, we also will just have to learn to take time to remember to bring our own shopping bags, or our earth will deteriorate.