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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
27. Garbage
I
was walking down the lane the other day and I noticed this piece
of litter, looked like the melted bottom of a plastic bottle. I
fumed for a bit, angry at whoever had just tossed it there, and
planned to pick it up on my way back. To carry it all the way home,
where I'd throw it in the garbage, and three weeks later take to
the dump. And it suddenly occurred to me: why go to all that trouble
just so it could be buried in some arbitrary place six miles away
from here, when I could just as easily bury it here?
But
it's not so arbitrary, is it. It's 'away from here', it's
not on the lane I walk on every day, it's not in my backyard. And
I realized then that when city planners started including dumps
in their blueprints, we took a seriously wrong turn: with such a
word, such a concept, we legitimized NIMBY. So too with words like
'litter' and 'garbage'. What is that but stuff that doesn't belong
here, stuff we don't want here, here in our back yard.
We 'throw it away'.
And
where is 'away'? It's a piece of land bought or rented for just
that purpose; a bunch of people, the city, the community, has simply
pooled their money, their taxes, to hire someone to pick up and
move the stuff we don't want, from 'here' to 'there'. But there's
a limited amount of land--why should some people get extra land
for their garbage, for 'disposal'? Because they can, can pay (more)
for it? So? The richest isn't necessarily the rightest. (How did
they come to be able to pay more? And why is the owner selling,
to the highest bidder?) Further, given the limitedness of land,
that specially designated piece of land is likely to be in somebody
else's back yard. (And whose back yard is it in? In what parts of
the city, on what parts of the planet, is it?)
Now
that might not be so bad, but let's go back to square one: why?
Why did the people want the stuff moved in the first place?
Because it's unhealthy and/or unsightly. The stockholder mode (I
own, therefore I have the right to...) is simplistic, in denial
with regard to relationships, to interdependence. The stakeholder
mode (I am affected by, therefore I have the right to...) is more
enlightened. And since the stuff you put in your dump can deteriorate
my land, my water, my air, my life, no, you don't have the right,
even though you have the money, to pay someone to move it from your
back yard to mine. (Actually, it can affect me even if it stays
in your backyard. Because it doesn't really. Stay there. So you
don't even have the right to buy it, to produce it, in the first
place. But I digress.)
Perhaps
if there was no such thing as 'the dump', if we didn't have 'the
garbage' under the sink and a 'waste' basket in the back corner
of the room, perhaps then we wouldn't buy so many plastic bottles.
There's only so many you can bury. They don't decompose. Perhaps
instead, we'd buy our cola as concentrate in bottles half the size
or as fizz tablets wrapped in paper. Perhaps we'd buy only reusables,
only compostables. My god if we'd had to keep on our own half-acre
or in our own apartment everything we've ever thrown out... Imagine
a world in which there was no word for garbage.
.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated early April 2003
Previous
polemics
26.
25.
24.
23.
22.
21.
20.
19.
18.
17.
16.
15.
14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
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