Opinion

Poison Garbage

By DOUGLAS LUMMIS

Garbage day has become a big problem in my neighborhood. The city office has recently added a new category, so now we have six kinds of garbage. What used to be called "unburnable garbage" has been divided in two: "unburnable garbage" and "plastic garbage." I had always thought that plastic was exactly the thing we were not supposed to burn. But now plastic is carried off to some distant place where it is burned in special furnaces, safely (so they say).

Some of the categories are easy to understand. "Large garbage" is a matter of judging the size. "Bottles and cans" means just bottles and cans. "Harmful garbage" means batteries, mercury thermometers and fluorescent light tubes (But the name is confusing, because much of the unburnable garbage is also harmful).

Burnable garbage is a strange category, as it includes things that do not burn. Ashes, for example, or the sand from your cat's toilet or seashells. Perhaps "burnable" describes "things that, when put in a fire, do not harm."

But the big problem is distinguishing "plastic garbage" from "unburnable garbage." (Actually "unburnable" is a mistranslation. The instructions from the city office do not say "unburnable" (moyasenai) but "not to be burnt" (moyasanai). This is because many of the "unburnables" burn quite well, but when they do they produce poison gas.) Many of the items in the nonplastic category are things we have always called "plastic": kitchen wrap, tofu boxes, egg cartons, ham and bacon packages, "plastic" belts and raincoats. On the other hand, plastic foam containers for noodles, vegetables, bento, candy or yogurt go with the "plastic" garbage to be burnt.

How do you tell a bacon tray from a mushroom tray? And anyway, who can remember all this? What it means, in our house at least, is that on "plastic" and "unburnable" garbage day, we sit down and go through the bag item by item, checking each smelly piece against the chart. Or, not having time to do that, we postpone it, and garbage piles up in the kitchen and the basement.

My question is: If this stuff is so poisonous, why are they manufacturing it?

And why do we, the consumers, spend hours each week cleaning up this junk that never should have been manufactured?

Recently I have started taking action against this situation. At the market where I shop, after I pass through the checkout stand, I open up all the packages of food and transfer the contents to simple plastic (burnable) bags. (It would be better to bring reusable containers, but I haven't advanced that far yet.) Then I deposit all the trays, packages, etc. in the market's garbage can. I didn't ask for any of this stuff; let them figure out how to divide it up.

After I started doing this, I noticed a lot of other people doing the same.

If we all do it, the stores will be forced to change their packaging procedures. And garbage day will get a lot simpler.

Shukan ST: July 31, 1998

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