September 22, 1999

A few thoughts on trash and compost

I have been known to criticize the Coastside Scavengers from time to time, usually quite justifiably, but sometimes even I don't understand all the facts. I was aware of one particular dumb fact. I knew that the state requires communities to cut back on waste materials by a certain percentage from the quantity generated on a given date in the past. There can be heavy fines if the percentage cut comes in short on the day of reckoning. That's dumb because it takes little account of where the communities involved started from. Anyone knows that if someone habitually overeats and someone else is barely eating enough to survive, and you make them both cut back on calories by 50 percent, one will do just fine, but the other is in real trouble.

My father's mother was a natural born recycler. She simply didn't waste anything. She was brought up in the Azores, where all they had in abundance was poverty and a strong religious faith. She composted all her kitchen scraps for the garden. She recycled old clothes into her famous throw rugs. She didn't do this just as a hobby, or just because it gave her a sense of fulfillment. In the old country those who wasted any of what little they had didn't survive. She generated very little that found its way to a garbage can.

If she had been required to cut that tiny amount in half, it might not have been possible. In the same fashion, only if Pacifica was profligate in the amount of trash we formerly generated will we find it easy to cut our waste volume severely, as we are being required to do.

I have also learned something rather disturbing. In the hills behind Cabrillo School are some rather large gullies. I suggested what I thought was a clever idea. Why not grind up the yard waste Coastside Scavenger picks up each third Saturday, and fill those gullies. After an appropriate amount of time has passed, this natural compost pit could then be planted to shrubs or trees. The roots would tie the compost to the sandy hillside and the gullying might slow or cease.

This would also save the scavenger some trips to the dump, thus saving money, which might translate into lower rates or better profits, or both. Can't be done. The only way that the Coastside Scavengers can get credit for doing a good deed with the yard waste they pick up is to take it to the dump and get a receipt for it. No receipt, no credit. No credit, and the city gets fined. Did somebody say "Catch 22?"

Fifty thousand years from now, when our alphabet has been forgotten, our video tapes and books have crumbled to dust, our computers gone to their electronic reward, the names of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton mean nothing, and the new icecap has returned local beaches to a point west of the Farallones, our most enduring legacy may be our dump sites. Would you like to be remembered only by the trash you leave behind? Are broken plastic toys, headless beanie babies, chunks of old concrete, remnants of old lead batteries and thousands of worn out tires the way you want the future to think of you?

If you wish, you may read some previous Reactor columns at thr Reactor's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ or e-mail Paul@thereactor.net.