Mt. Trashmore
Our trash pile continues to mount in the aftermath of the Christmas gift exchange. Come Monday morning there will be a mountain of refuse on the curb capable of creating its own weather. This really bugs me as a twenty-first century eco-sensitive earth dweller. How did this happen? We have the smallest trashcan in the neighborhood and most weeks I don’t even fill it. I have always been proud of how little we throw away. But now there is this mess!
Certainly we could tone down the Christmas buying extravaganza. If it were just my wife and I waste would not even be an issue. This year I bought her a membership in the “orchid of the month” club, a service in which she will receive a fresh, blooming orchid from Hawaii every month. Not a whole lot to throw away there. I got a really cool learning remote control device that will operate every piece of equipment in my home theater. I have just gone from four remote controls to one. How’s that for conservation? This thing can be programmed to turn on a movie, dim the lights and even scratch my butt with the push of a button.
By far, the biggest waste generator this Christmas is my eight year old son. It really isn’t his fault. He didn’t ask for much. His wish list had just one entry: “everything.” If only “everything” could be put into one box. But even if you could stick everything in a box, you wouldn’t be done. You have to buy the accessories for everything, too. Everything is just the beginning!
As long as we are on the topic of waste reduction, wrapping paper is certainly an item for discussion. Unfortunately, we can’t just do away with wrapping presents, as much as that thought is appealing way past midnight on Christmas morning when you are still wrapping, and there is no end in sight, and unknowingly, you have just wrapped an empty box and labeled it to your mother-in-law. No, as wasteful as wrapping presents is, without it there is simply no element of surprise. Without wrapping paper, gift exchange distills down to “Uh, here, I got you this, as you can obviously see.” So, there will always be wrapping paper. I’m thinking maybe we should be using recyclable Christmas paper; certainly that would help. But since we bought a massive supply of wrapping paper from the Boy Scouts back in 1986, we feel the need to use up what we have – despite the fact that this stuff was not made to recycle, this stuff will never break down in the landfill, this stuff will be unearthed thousands of years from now by beings who have no idea who Garfield the Cat is.
The other big problem area in the trash arena is product packaging. What a horrendous sight after the dust clears on Christmas morning and the living room looks like a battlefield scarred by the shrapnel of exploded packages. There is just too much packaging going on out there. It’s depressing not only from the waste standpoint but also from the message all this packaging sends to us from the manufacturers. There is a serious lack of trust for consumers by the manufacturers of the world. Quite frankly, they don’t trust us at all. They think that we are going to steal their products. And some people do steal their products, so the manufacturers say, “See, you people are a bunch of thieves; we’re going to have to put this tiny little Matchbox car in a big friggin’ plastic tear-resistant package with sixteen twist ties holding it in place just to keep you from stealing it.” I would like to ask the toy manufacturers of the world if they couldn’t just give us consumers a break here – I mean look, our hands are bleeding like stigmata from opening these packages – won’t you at least consider giving us a second chance? “No.” Okay, fair enough, Mr. Manufacturer, but could you at least look in on the employee you’re paying to write those instructional booklets to see if he is in fact a human and not a monkey pounding away on a typewriter? A monkey that is quasi-literate in twelve languages? Do we really need to read about the choking hazard from sticking a Gandolf the White Wizard figurine down our throats in Finnish? The Finns have pretty much figured this stuff out. It’s just us moronic Americans who need to be told not to stick Lord of the Rings action figures down our throats. So write the damn warnings in English and save the paper. Okay? And while I’m on a rant, you can also stop enclosing those “bonus” DVDs in our packages that are really just promotional propaganda for other products you sell. We never watch them. They go right in the hopper, too.
Waste. Everywhere I look there is waste. Enough already. I can't look at it any more. Time to play with my new remote control. Hey, I wonder what happens when I push this button labeled “fetch me a beer.” Well, I’ll be damned…
1:49:22 PM 
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