This is one of those stories that has caught me off guard to the degree that I wonder why newspaper editors even wake up in the morning. This story is so profoundly indicative of what is to come, that I cannot understand the lack of attention being given to it!
Naples. Yes, the one in Italy associated with beauty and culture. Well, they have not had their garbage collected SINCE DECEMBER of 2007!!!!!!
Think right now for a second about how bad your streets/lawn would look if the entire city’s garbage wasn’t picked up for 6 months. Holy Jesus! What kind of strike would lead to this kind of unsolved dispute? There was no strike. The city simply ran out of room in the landfills. There are no legal dumps open at all in all of Naples! They have filled the dumps!
Again, this is one of those issues we sweep under the rug (the topsoil) in our daily lives. We just put these bags of refuse out to the curb and they magically disappear in the morning on “garbage day”. There is really no responsibility for people who abuse the system and refuse to recycle, or who just consume at such an incredible rate, that they leave 10 bags of garbage to be picked up per week. I often see houses on garbage eve, with up to 15 bags of garbage waiting to be heaved into a hole in the earth at the outskirts of town. I almost always end up shaking my head, lost for expression.
You see, I bust my hump to recycle and limit my trash output, and when I see a repeat-offending trash hoarder unloading a lifetime of garbage EVERY WEEK, I get a little miffed.
And I wonder, in Naples, if these people are starting to USE LESS! If you look a the pictures in the stories attached, you can see the plethora of stink left rotting in parking lots, streets, and yards. How has this not sparked HUGE health issues in the area? How has this story been untold to the masses as a warning of what can happen when you haphazardly toss away belongings like nothing matters at the end of this process?
I have always wondered how my neighbours (over the years) cannot realize how profound the imbalance is between the output of trash from themselves and the people living next to them. All I can say, really, is that if I put 6 bags of garbage out every week, and my neighbour put out 4 bags per month, and some weeks putting out nothing at all, I know I would wonder how the hell they do it. Lugging filth the curb is work. It’s almost too much work for our society’s most active, to haul out bags of garbage. But what this kind of trash output tells me is that the lack of awareness of the impact of trash on our city, environment, watershed, etc. makes it insatiable to citizens. There is no end in sight for the long line of garbage when no one is held accountable for the amount they waste.
I heard a conversation at the bar recently, where the discussion weaved into the possibility of paying for trash output. Citizens pay for the amount of bags (over the allotted amount) they require relief of, and if they stay under the limit, they pay nothing extra. Taxes take care of the minimum allotted amount. I love this idea. The only people who don’t like it seem to be those who are unable to put a little thought into the products they buy, maybe reducing output by buying things with less packaging.
If these kinds of garbage crises are going to “surface” in other cities, you can bet your bottom that people are going to pay.
I just wanted to share this with all of you, and maybe spark the question about how much we throw away. How much waste are you making? Do you rely on the magic of disappearing curb garbage fairies every week a little too much? Could you be easing the strain on your landfill?
Here Be Dragons 