Recycling is one of my weapons to diminish my carbon footprint on the Earth. No car is another. An avoidance of plastic packaging has shrunk my trash contribution to South Oxford Street to the size of a small paper bag. I donate my organic trash to the compost heap at the Fort Greene Farmer’s Market on Saturday. On my subway rides to and from work I stoop to pick up other people’s trash, mostly empty coffee cups from the caffeine junkies and fast snack bags from fat people in training to be obese.
These sisyphean efforts are greeted by passers-by with encouragement, but none of them ever join me in my quest to stop creating litter and in the aftermath of the last snowstorm the New York media wolfmaned the hectoring of the sanitation for their failure to plow the streets to fearmongering the public about the impending garbage overload.
The Daily News and NY Post headlined the possibility of New Yorkers being confronted by gauntlets of trash bags on the sidewalks. Nothing like that occurred as the piles of snow melted to reveal that people don’t really produce much trash, when they can’t leave their homes to buy crap food wrapped in plastic.
No consumption.
No trash.
Not even from Mickey Ds, the leader in garbage food and packaging.
Over a trillion tons of trash served yearly.