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Sometimes talking trash
can be a good thing

IF anything good emerges from the City Council's craziness in trying to find a politically correct site for a landfill, it may be that a lot of Oahu residents are finally talking and thinking seriously about trash.

Though most of the loud and bitter discussion has been of the NIMBY type as one community or another objects to being saddled with the mounds of garbage everyone on the island generates, there have been soundings of sensible solutions.

Intentionally or not, Council members -- in grasping at straws to pull themselves from the pit of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't decisions -- have at least raised the consciousness of citizens. They may now realize that they and government leaders have to look for creative ways to deal with the tons of wastes that are the inevitable byproduct of human existence.

As long as we've occupied this planet, we have created garbage. Archaeologists can even trace the lives and societal structures of early humans by studying what they've left behind.

Our ancestors used most of what they hunted and gathered. An animal was killed primarily for food, but its hide, bones, antlers or tusks were made into clothing and shelter, tools and weapons. Stalks and reeds from grain plants were woven into baskets or other implements. Very little was thrown away.

As humans have advanced, we have become increasingly prolific at making wastes.

A century ago, people brought baskets to the general store to carry home their purchases. Today, stores bag items for you, some of them in thin "biodegradable" plastic, others in slick, thick, graphically attractive cardboard with twined polyester handles likely to last far longer than the product it once held.

The consumerism that drives the U.S. economy has muddled the lines between needs and wants so that a perfectly good piece of clothing gets shoved aside not because it is threadbare, but because it is "so last year." A flat-screen television set still in fine working order is traded for a new one that has some "innovative" gizmo that redefines high definition.

At the same time, marketing demands that everything from vitamins and hair barrettes to a video disc be overpackaged with brightly colored labels and boxes to appeal to buyers, and with impermeable wrapping to deter shoplifting.

Convenience requires that non-nutritious beverages come in individual serving sizes. No need for a glass or cup; just throw it in the nearest trash can or out the car window. Out of sight, out of mind, or so we thought.

If the Council manages to choose a landfill site today, as a state-imposed deadline requires, the decision ought to be just the first of many initiatives.

Someday -- maybe soon, maybe later -- technological progress will lessen the need for massive burial grounds. But it is encouraging that people are coming to understand that the stream of wastes also has to be slowed and that the solution lies in a number of efforts.

Recycling is one of them, and finding new uses for empty bottles, cans, plastic and glass. Another is to shun products that are overpackaged and insist that companies that make them change or recapture the waste, as some countries are starting to do.

Consumers might also reevaluate what they buy and decide whether the product is something they really need, whether the cost of the "new and improved" squares with the costs of throwing away the old -- if only because a disposable society yields lots of stuff to throw away.

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