Trashed

Trashed Scott A. Lukas In Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage, Carl A. Zimring and William L. Rathje, eds., Los Angeles: Sage, 2012, Pp. 937-938. Trashed is a 2007 documentary film directed by Bill Kirkos. The film focuses on the growing business of waste disposal and addresses the myriad 937 consequences that result from overconsumption and waste. The film begins with mention of a 2000 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study that linked global climate change and solid waste management. Since that time, Americans have continued to produce increasing amounts of garbage, with the average American producing 4.5 pounds every day, for a total of 400 million tons of garbage. According to the filmmaker, this stems from a society that places higher value on things that it buys and throws away, rather than on conservation, recycling, reuse, and meaningful reductions. In addressing this social problem, Trashed uses the case study of the landfill and its relationship to economics, the environment, and social issues. Case Studies Like many states, Indiana imports a large amount of garbage—some 3 million tons of out-of-state garbage. Combined with this statistic is the fact that between 2000 and 2004, the number of curbside recycling programs dropped by 50 percent. The film discusses the politics surrounding the Mallard Lake Landfill, a 256-acre landfill located in Anderson, Indiana. Residents have been battling to keep the landfill out of their community, in part due to its size, concerns about leachate and the effects on aquifers, and its close proximity to an elementary school. While many residents have expressed concerns about the impact of the landfill, landfills like Mallard Lake can make millions of dollars per year. The next case study is the state of Michigan. Since 2004, 10 million tons of domestic and international garbage have been brought into the state, with 400 garbage trucks arriving from Toronto every day. Michigan offers one of the cheapest rates for the importing of garbage and some state legislation attempting to change this tendency has been unsuccessful. In some cases, medical waste has leaked from the garbage trucks. Using the state of Michigan as a case study, Kirkos emphasizes that more and more landfills are private, money-making operations. Alternatives The film then turns attention to the contrast of the landfill—recycling. During World War II, there was a massive effort to recycle and conserve precious resources for the war effort. However, following the war, an explosion of commerce and waste resulted in greater threats to the environment. The spirit of recycling has been difficult to inculcate, in part because there is more money to be made in landfills than in recycling. Three successful examples of recycling and reuse are then offered. The first is Urban Ore Ecopark in Berkeley, California, a household supply store that includes various items, such as old bathtubs, doors, and consumer electronics. The store functions as a reuse market in which old items can be turned in and then resold to consumers. The second is Interface, Inc., the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer. According to its CEO Ray Anderson, while reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, he had an epiphany that he was a plunderer of the Earth, and this led him to transform his company into being restorative and sustainable. Using a reclamation program, old carpet is turned in and reused, essentially replacing a linear production process with a cyclical one. The third example considered is that of New York freegans—individuals who salvage food from trash and express an anticonsumerist ideology. The film concludes with case studies on composting and the effects of plastics in 938 the world’s oceans. In the first case, the examples of Toronto’s successful green-bin wet- waste program and San Francisco’s restaurant composting programs (in which, in some cases, up to 90 percent of garbage is either composted or recycled) are detailed. In the second, the impact of plastics in the oceans is addressed by discussing the plight of seabirds resultant from the 3.5 million tons of plastics in the world’s oceans. According to the film, there is six times more plastic than marine life on the surface of the North Pacific Gyre. Scott A. Lukas Lake Tahoe Community College See Also: Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home; Landfills, Modern; Recycling Further Readings Kasser, Tim. The High Price of Materialism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Kirkos, B. Trashed. Documentary film. Oxi Productions, 2007. Kirkos, B. Trashed. Supplemental Web site. http://www.trashedmovie.com/ 938