Don’t forget Andy, you’re always free to use our trash can 🚮

Hey Andy, don’t forget you’re always welcome to use our trash bin, we always have room the neighbor told me.

The trash bag was falling apart as I put it in the fire pit. I piled a bunch of kindling and tinder over the garbage bag, poured on some used motor oil and lighter fluid, took the lighter out and lit the discarded Styrofoam egg carton on fire, which quickly caught fire, with its ordinary black styrene laden smoke and tart smell before catching the bag from frozen broccoli on fire and woosh as the tinder and lighter fluid and catches. I pile more wood on the fire, it damp and ice covered but quickly succumbing to the heat produced by the rich mix of hydrocarbons from kitchen garbage, dry as the avidly separate out the organics for composting.

That was the fire, like so many others. The plastic Greek yogurt containers and milk jugs incinerated, turned into flame and warmth on that cold winter day, drying out the wood that eventually caught and produced a night of warmth. Rather being crushed into a garbage truck and hauled to the mound on the outskirts of town for  a million years, it became something beautiful in form of warmth and brightness on a cold winter’s night in wilderness. Eating healthier and buying less crap, there is less and less to burn, and indeed when I have my own land, garden, livestock, there will be even less to burn. Maybe I won’t win eco-warrior of the year, but it is easy on my mind.