I Just Can't Believe This.....

A week or so ago I was flipping the channels one evening.....this of course was when no one was around because otherwise I am forced to endure hours of Wow Wow Wubzey, Ghost Hunters or World Series of Poker.........

I can't even tell you the name of the show or what channel it was on, but it was about garbage. Not garbage in the sense that 90% of what is on TV is garbage, but literally garbage.

Why does this fascinate me? Who knows.....I don't know why anything fascinates me these days LOL.....I'm a simple person I guess. Maybe it's because garbage is almost an enigma of sorts. We all make garbage. We take it out each week for pick up by the cool garbage truck. We almost pity the guys who have to deal with it after we leave it on the curb.......some of us even know where they take the garbage. But what happens to the garbage when they unload it from the trucks? Where does it go? How does it get there? Have you ever wondered?

Well that takes me to this show. They were following garbage! From the can to the dump. They even had a "Sanitation Engineer" aka "Garbage Man" showing the host how to properly lift garbage cans and or bags and toss them into the garbage truck. It was pretty interesting.
Next the guy went with the truck to the landfill and much to my dismay they don't just dump it off to bury it!

So much of our garbage is resorted for recycling.....it was amazing to see how they sorted the garbage, both by hand (yuck) and machine. They ended up with TONS of paper, metal and glass that could be recycled.

As interesting as all of this was to me.....nothing prepared me for one single factual nugget the host revealed. I watched this show and the most memorable thing was this statement.

"Do you know where the largest landfill in the world is?"

Several cities popped into my head.....NYC? It's a big city with LOTS of people. That surely equals TONS of garbage. OK.....maybe LA? Houston? Heck, what about Hong Kong or some foreign city......largest in the WORLD?!

You are going to be SHOCKED at this.....cause I know I was. LOL

The largest landfill in the world is not a city.......it's not in a state........not in a country.....not even on a continent! It's IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN!!!

Are you kidding me?!?! Nope!
Check it out: http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm
Make sure you read the whole thing.......it's really interesting!

Can you believe that?! There is a GIANT (twice the size of Texas) vortex of swirling garbage in the middle of the ocean. So much garbage in fact that they can't remove it because there is no place for it! Fascinating AND disturbing really! LOL

Not only is that one of the craziest things I've learned recently, it's something that makes me really think about my impact on the earth.

Now........I'm not one to go totally off the handle and be a green green girl. But I know there are a few easy things I could do in my daily life to help out in a small way. I can say though that we do not buy bottled water. We drink the filtered water from our fridge in a glass. I'm even known to bring a glass of water with me. It's not as "easy" as having a bottle of water with a lid, but I like it because I'm an ice eater LOL

We also are replacing our regular light bulbs with the energy efficient ones. Our builder put in regular light bulbs and I'm not wasteful, so when they burn out I will put the green bulbs in :D

And I bought a tote bag for the store......I admit I am not the best at remembering it. But I have good intentions and am going to make a real effort to wean myself from those store plastic bags that I swear breed in my laundry room. I am guilty of throwing many in the garbage. However I noticed that my local grocery store has a recycle bin for the plastic bags. From now on I put them in that.

Didn't really mean for this post to turn into a go green lecture of sorts......but man, how can you not think about it when you learn that there is garbage floating in a section of ocean that spans the area of a continent and extends 100 feet below the surface?!

Something to reflect on and think about........