Portfolio Reflection

3

Anthropocene and the Environment

The current generation has experienced heightened human activities that interfere with the environment and climate while posing a risk to human health in many ways. The United States economy has become accustomed to garbage, which is a socioeconomic and environmental dilemma that defeats the concept of economic markets. As such, excess consumption has increased in ways that have made it hard for entrepreneurs to find solutions that can turn garbage into a stream for raw materials. Edward Humes’ Garbology explores ways of dealing with the excessive dependency on consumption that result in a high output of garbage that has become an environmental and socioeconomic concern for citizens and governments.

The US has encountered a large output of trash problems that social anthropologists have found no solution to manage the social economic and environmental challenges. Globalization plays a role in the trash problem that the US experience, which includes the dangerous movement of products across the seas to satisfy the heightened consumption urge in the US. The accumulation of debris over the years has turned into layers of thousands upon millions of tons of waste. Individuals contribute about 102 tons of trash in a lifetime that is equivalent to 1,100 graves, which is extremely high and unsustainable in the environment (Humes 5). Likewise, the author indicates that the American Dream also contributes to the trash problem because endless accumulation that drives markets and product packaging materials that include “boxes, wrappers, bags, ties, bottles, caps, and plastic bubbles” carry these products (Humes 6). Even the purchased products are likely to break and become obsolete with time, which adds to the amount of garbage bound for the landfill. Such product packaging contributes by 44% to the greenhouse gas emission that directly affects climate by causing global warming (Humes 7). Likewise, Carol Boggs in “Human Niche Construction and the Anthropocene” clarifies that human niche construction has altered climate due to greenhouse gases emission and other activities that have altered nutrient cycles, nitrogen, and phosphorous (Boggs 1). Moreover, sanitation cost New York $2.2 billion in 2011 that included $300 million for transporting trash to landfills (Humes 7). Even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that 140 million tons of garbage is unaccounted due to dependency on statistics rather than real data on garbage (Humes 9). Garbage is equally associated with extreme deforestation citing China that has to find trees and paper to make most of the packaging materials.

The management of landfills has become a major economic and industrial sector that is constantly growing without a discernable controlling mechanism to end the accelerate consumption in society resulting in environmental damage that threats human life. Humes argues that trash mountains continue to increase in size daily with 69% in landfills and 24% being recycled, which exposes people to unanticipated health risks (Humes 27). A case analysis of Puente Hills dumping site in Los Angeles reveals the effects of excessive garbage in society. The site’s operations started in the 1950s and it continues to support waste management in the city of Los Angeles. Puente Hills has been under a garbage crisis as other 1,200 sanitary landfills across the US that hold extensive hazardous and common waste (Humes 28). Environmentalists have complained about the status of Puente Hills’s neighborhood that has been exposed to clogged alleys, filth, disease, and odor. The site’s most common garbage includes paper, food scraps, yard waste leather, plastics, metal, rubber textiles, wood, glass, and other materials (Humes 38). Products also found in are furniture, clothing, wood packaging, corrugated boxes, disposable diapers, bottles, and rubber (Humes 37). Landfills continue to grow daily but the solution to reducing waste is another challenge that an entire country must discuss before adopting measures that can reduce trash.

Several states have adopted the principles of reuse and recycling to reduce the excess production of trash in the United States. Homes have tried using backyard trash burning approaches without understanding its negative impacts. The recycling approach is not working compared to the high volume of trash moving into landfills. As such, the most common method of handling trash is cooking the garbage using steam or naphtha before pressing the liquid to settle tanks to separate reusable materials from unusable trash. Recycling has negative impacts that make it worse than dumping the entire trash. Key among these is the fact that backyard trash produces dangerous “levels of dioxins, poisonous,” and carcinogenic substances formed in “low-temperature, smoky, and inefficient combustion” (Humes 53). The process emits soot and other fine particulates that cause emphysema and lung cancer. Such substances irritate the lungs, exacerbate asthma, and cause lung diseases. Burning garbage individual releases toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that lead to “cancer and cause birth defects or fetal death” (Humes 53). Boggs maintains that human activities shape the niche as such changes can cause maladaptive experiences (Boggs 4). Most states banned home incinerators because such activities release more toxins due to poor combustion procedures.

Wastefulness because of high consumption has become a lifestyle that causes a huge output of garbage that affects the US environment. Humes blames the economic system for insisting that people have to consume more and more products and services to support their country and system as the cause of large landfills (Humes 70). Citizens have gained momentum in purchasing to support a devouring form of consumption. While the reduction of consumption could reduce garbage, the main obstacle is the high rate of consumption that governments and organizations have influenced Americans into observing as a form of showing off their wealth and the American Dream. Americans are unlikely to stop the high level of consumerism due to the acceptance of materialism views as the true representation of endless abundance. Statistics indicate that plastic trash was 0.4% in 1960 before increasing to 63 times in 2000 as Americans consumed 100 billion plastic bags costing $4 billion (Humes 73). Consumption of soda sold in plastic cans and bottles is so high that the process of recycling such PET plastics is virtually impossible for the producing companies. Americans consumer soda and other beverages sold in PET containers but these plastics end in the dumping sites, landfills, and even in unexpected places.

Trash has become a major source of pollution in the environment as millions of tons end up in water bodies. Humes indicates that a minimum of 7 million tons of garbage is in oceans that comprises of 80% plastics, which poses a risk to marine life (Humes 134). Plastic concentration in oceans is so high that some researchers indicate a probability of the water bodies harboring about 63% of all plastics that were manufactured in 2011 (Humes 134). The most affected marine life are sea mammals that are huge and likely to come into contact with these plastics. Humes argues “hundred thousand marine mammals are killed each year from ocean plastics, that is 80% of the trash at sea is from land sources rather than ships, that there is an actual garbage island looming somewhere in the Pacific” (134). As seen, human leads in niche construction with the high use of plastics that move into seas and adversely affect marine life (Bogg 1). Plastics are threatening different species and undermining their survival in the natural habitat.

Productive recycling methods based on creating garbology businesses have provided a gleam of hope in generating capital that can support cities in handling trash but without tangible results. Rathje’s proposal indicates that unearthing garbage in Phoenix alone would recover $6 million worth of aluminum cans that could be recycled and resold at the current market price (Humes 177). Several companies have unearthed garbage and tried recycling investments in Canada and Mexico. However, most of these attempts have only produced research results that indicate the source of trash without proper solutions for handling the garbage. The generation of Decadence Now has no way of overcoming excessive generation of trash even with attempts to shrink it by recycling as a business proposal. Such approaches have been implemented in different cities, but the result is usually that recycling and reusing do not empty the landfills.

The best way to overcome the excessive production of waste in the world since it is impossible to recycle is by implementing restrictions and redesigning production. Trash-to-energy plans have been tried to cut down on waste and provide solutions for cities, but the concept is not working although with environmentalist heritage. Business recycling is a major way of handling landfills. Small entrepreneurs have used materials from these landfills to create businesses. For example, Keller made the ChicoBag that grew into $5 million annual revenues by collecting polyester from landfills (Humes 212). Such business helped to protect the environment but in small-scale ways that did not deal with the trash menace. Consequently, several states started passing restriction measures to curb the generation of garbage. Cities in California prohibited plastic bags that include San Francisco in 2007, Malibu, Fairfax, and Manhattan Beach in 2008. Several states in the US have followed similar approaches that include WA’s Edmonds and Seattle in 2009 and HI’s Maui County. Seemingly, restrictions have reduced the rate of plastic output, which correlates with the reduction of garbage in landfills. Portland, Oregon has implemented green policies that have seen the city recycle 59% of landfills into energy (Humes 249). The city has put in place anaerobic digesters that include vats that can speed up the decomposition of garbage to make methane that is used to make electricity and vehicle fuel. Such proactive strategies have made the city greener and better for the people.

Waste management facilities have become the destination of most garbage instead of dumping in landfills. Oregon is trying the waste-treatment approach that uses plasma gasification technology, which vaporizes garbage using electricity heat at 25,000 degrees (Humes 250-251). Since the technology takes place anaerobically, most toxic and noxious byproducts are never produced during the combustion process. The result is a product known as synthetic gaseous fuel and a lump of shiny rock that locks in toxins and is safe. The process is effective in reducing trash by 99% with a product that is usable in the current economy (Humes 251). Likewise, Copenhagen in Denmark has created measures that have made the country remarkable in controlling trash as renewable energy. The city has established waste-to-energy plants that handle garbage through trash burning. The use of power-generating plants is handling tons of garbage per day although on a small scale. The city has small-scale plants that handle 500-ton-a-day distributed in several locations to ensure that urban neighborhoods, suburban enclaves, and upscale areas are included in the plan to avoid spending more money on transporting waste over long distances. Such localized Danish plants reduce pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and generate electricity, which is connected to houses and businesses. Adoption of similar measures across the world can reduce the trash menace and turn landfills into energy production sites.

Humes provides solutions that contribute towards the field of Anthropocene and management of socio-economic and environment. Garbology exposes the American consumerism crisis that generates a high level of trash without solutions that can curb their environmental effects that alters the niche. As such, trash continues to increase with the excess materialism concepts whereby people have increased consumption without any alternative. States and cities have tried different measures to curb trash production like recycling, reusing, and reducing production but in vain. Alternatives that work include using waster to generate energy, which has worked in Oregon and Copenhagen and reduces waste by a higher percentage compared to all other measures.

Works Cited

Boggs, Carol. Human Niche Construction and the Anthropocene. Revising Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Four Theses, 2016.

Humes, Edward. Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. Penguin Group, 2012.