Garbage man

Trash or garbage…what’s your preference? I’ve always been more of a garbage man myself. It may be because I get a certain satisfaction in my daily routine of carrying the gallon ice cream pail of egg shells, coffee grounds, banana peels, and table scraps out to the garden compost pile. I like making compost; I like organic gardening; I like earthworms, and I don’t like waste. The garbage serves as the “green material,” (i.e., nitrogen) which helps heat up the “brown material,” which for my pile is mostly dried leaves from the maples that shade our home in summer. Compost, green manure (turned under ryegrass), and wood ashes will someday provide most of the fertilization needed for our small garden plot. I can’t put meat scraps or fish heads in the compost because that would draw vermin, so I bury it too deep to be dug up, usually three feet or more down.

Of course some trash is also bio-degradable, notably newsprint (not the colored ads) and cardboard. Both of these can serve as weed-smothering mulches if covered and weighted down against the wind. Earth worms love cardboard and newsprint mulches almost as much as coffee grounds. The worms not only “plow” and aerate garden soil with their burrowing, but also enrich it with worm castings and their dead bodies.

Some trash is recyclable, but most is not bio-degradable. I take a pick up load of trash to the public dumpster each month, only about a fourth of it is recyclable, even though I recycle metal cans and plastic jugs religiously. “How can I bring this much trash in now and have the same amount next month?” I muttered. (In our defense, I must say that we did have a lot less when I burned all paper packaging, but we have cut out burning because of the global warming issue.) “You buy more of it every week when you go to the store,” replied the dumpster attendant.

I prefer bio-degrading to recycling because energy and greenhouse gasses are created in both the transportation and remanufacture of recycled products, albeit much less than manufacturing from raw materials. Home produced vegetables and products require no containers for shipping, so I feel better about garden produce which does not need to be transported cross country or put in metal cans or plastic containers. I also feel a little more self-sufficient and independent. Gardening and turning compost piles are good exercise for breaking a sweat. No need for a gym membership. Of course, trash can be reduced by not buying stuff we don’t need. We need to discern between wants and needs. We are not slaves to consumerism. Besides, I also enjoy turning earthworms into crappie!