Ok, I get that people are not going to recycle. It’s a hassle. But can we at least tread a little bit lighter on this one planet earth of ours? Please. I am not a total tree hugger – although I have had the chance to spend some time in some amazing forests and do appreciate the occassional hug from an amazing tree. There was a cashew tree that comes into mind in particular. But that is not the point.
The point is that I adore Christmas and I love the holiday season. We watched a Christmas movie every single night in December and sang Christmas carols and prayed Christmas prayers. I love everything about Christmas.
This year I saw something I had never seen before. Maybe I didn’t want to see it before but I had never seen anything like this in over 40 years. I went to take the trash out and there by the community dumpster was a bunch of good stuff. I am also not a dumpster diver but if I were this would have been a field day. The dumpster itself was relatively empty and people had just come by and thrown their garbage and their stuff next to it. It must have been too much of an effort to get out of their car and properly dispose of their garbage.
Someone had even taken the time to properly dismantle a 7 foot fake Christmas tree and place it nicely back in it’s box. But then they just tossed it out along side all of the other garbage. I am all for fake trees but the idea is that you buy it and then you use it again the next year. There are several local churches nearby, a St. Vincent DePauls, and a Goodwill. All of those places would have happily accepted these items and then this stuff could have gone to good use. But now it is just on its way to a landfill somewhere.
It was very disheartening to see.
I know that I can personally do so much better when it comes to recycling and reducing the waste that our household produces but this site today was almost surreal. Are we really that wasteful? I guess so. There was the proof in front of my very own eyes.
So, I suppose this should just inspire me to be a little more diligent in reducing my impact on the landfill so that hopefully there will be more of a balance.