garbage!

September 23, 2009
Well, our time in Burlington is drawing to a close. It has been quite an eye-opener. The situation here is serious and pretty alarming. People either have the money to rent crappy apartments at high prices or to buy a house. Many others live in motels and in places like we are staying. It struck me as kind of odd when we first got here that so many motels advertised that they offered extended stay options. Now it makes perfect sense. There's a whole bunch of people that have to live that way because they can't afford an apartment. The place where we are is actually like a neighborhood. People stop and chat with their neighbors who are sitting outside of their cottages, many of the RVs have skirting set up around the bottom, and clearly people have been here for a while and are planning to be here for a while longer. If circumstances were somewhat different for us, I would probably consider staying right where I am, because it's actually pretty nice. But the place we are in won't work for 3 of us in the long term, getting a two-room cottage is more expensive, and the rates for all the cottages don't drop until after foliage season—so that means November. From November through March, Bill and I alone could live here for $900 per month. That includes everything—furniture, heat, water, electricity. For around here, that's a real bargain. But it's not November and it's not just Bill and me, so we will move on Friday morning. We have decided to go to Buffalo. We had been thinking about Bismarck or Minneapolis/St Paul. The latter was my second choice before we left Klamath Falls, and I didn't see anything to really dislike when we were there. The hesitation I had was about the fact that it was a large urban area. I liked Bismarck. But we were limiting ourselves to places we had stopped on the way here. As we looked into both places, we saw some things that concerned us. Minneapolis had high rents like here. Bismarck had much lower rent, but not a lot available and not much new being added. So one day Bill said, “What about Madison, Wisconsin?” That seemed reasonable to me, so we looked into it. It's like the complete opposite of here! Apartments everywhere, new ones added all the time, and sales like free rent and low security deposits. This seemed quite hopeful. So we went through a few days planning on that. Bill emailed with some questions to one woman and she has emailed back a couple of times and is prepared to make an appointment to show us the apartment. Quite a shift from what we're experienced here! But then Bill said, “What about Buffalo?” I really don't care. So we looked into that. There are lots of affordable apartments and new ones being added every day. Not quite as many sales. But it is 700 miles closer than Madison, it is on Lake Erie, and close to Canada. So we will swing by there and see what we can do. We won't be staying as long as we've stayed here and we keep Madison as a possibility if Buffalo doesn't work out. I am interested to see what happens. As for Burlington, I find it disturbing that there is such a clear class divide here and it does not seem that there is any activism or even much discussion of this serious community problem.
In truth, it makes me far less enthusiastic about the community.
Last night we went down the street to the Pierson Library in Shelburne to see the documentary “Garbage! The Revolution Begins at Home.” It was a good film and the filmmaker had good intentions. As is often the case with these kinds of things, I felt that it didn't go far enough. It was kind of superficial to me, but then I have been aware of the issues addressed for some time and tried to make changes in my life because of what I learned. But I suppose that as an introduction to the whole subject, it was fine. The filmmaker got some friends of his to collect their garbage for 3 months so they could see how much they accumulated. They live in Toronto. In that community, they put wet garbage in separate containers to be picked up and sent to the composting plant. So rather than keep all of that, they weighed it and put it out for collection. They also separated their recyclables. In the end they had 320 pounds of wet garbage, and 83 bags of garbage and recyclables. They had 3 small children. Throughout the film, I had the feeling that this was not changing their lives at all. There were a few exclamations of surprise at how much trash they generated, but no real comments about changing behavior. Their house had 5 bathrooms. There was no discussion of using less water. The filmmaker was the only one who seemed serious about making changes. He got rid of his beloved jeep because of the poor gas mileage and other issues. He had it recycled. There was no discussion about buying less and using less, which is really what is going to have to happen if we are going to get anywhere. Recycling cardboard isn't going to cut it. We should all do it, but it's not enough.
There were a couple of things I did not know. One is that Toronto trucks its garbage to Michigan to be processed. One of the more powerful parts of the film was when they spoke to people who live near the ring of landfills about what they have to deal with. There are large truck speeding down their suburban residential streets—one woman can't even ride her bike like she used to because it's no longer safe. They talked about the stench they live with. One couple said that they had visitors from out of town one summer and they left because it was so bad. And there's the dust from the incineration of the trash—it floats down into people's homes and lungs and contains all kinds of carcinogens, including asbestos. And of course, they couldn't sell their houses even before this economic mess—and it seems fair to assume that what material wealth they had was probably tied up in their houses. The other part of the movie that was very moving and disturbing was the part where they spoke to people in West Virginia about the coal mining and processing plants that are ripping the tops off of mountains and threatening the health of children in school, as well as entire communities. They build these things right near schools, so if the containment ponds fail—as they did last winter—the school will be flooded with the poisonous sludge. Children have to leave school because they are sick and have terrible headaches when they are blasting and processing the coal, sending dust everywhere. One guy said, “There have to be some things that are more important than money.” as he walked around showing the filmmaker the giant cracks in the ground that have appeared because of the blasting—one was over 600 feet deep and 10,000 feet long. Not to mention the fact that they are ripping the tops off the mountains as far as the eye can see. The coal companies want him to sell his land and he refuses. He pointed out the bullet holes all over the place. People want him to give in because of all those well-paying jobs the coal company keeps promising to provide. It was another reminder that it is those who are better off and live in the suburbs with 5 bathrooms that are using the resources and the working class people who live in far more modest circumstances that get to be sickened and have shorter life expectancies so that all that trash has a place to go and there's enough coal to light those 5 bathrooms. I am not sure how someone could listen to stories like that and not want to do something. I can't solve the problem by myself. But I can be aware of what is going on and try to use resources more wisely in an effort to do my part. I want to know I did what I could as I watch the situation deteriorate a little more every day.
One other interesting factoid from the movie—dead human bodies are taking longer to decompose. They speculate this is due to all of the preservatives in processed food and cosmetics. Soon our bodies will have to be disposed of as hazardous waste!