Anonymously smashed down in the White Garbage bag

As I smashed that empty cottage cheese container into the garbage container with frozen corn wrappers the junk mailer fliers this morning, I started to contemplate the meaning of anonymous nature of garbage once it enters the white garbage bag. I pack it down, layer in the bag coffee came in and the empty milk jug. Soon enough to be little more then an excellent fire starter – a mixture of plastic and paper garbage – turned into some bright yellow flames, reduced to carbon dioxide and little more.

I used to think recycling was important. I took pride in carefully separating out the cans and the bottles, the paper for recycling. I still separate out most of my food scraps, deposit beer cans. But the rest is just garbage, something to burn, something not to think much more about. The byproducts of an industrial society, some chemicals that might be somewhat pungent when I burn them up, but disappear to almost nothing. Blackened up in the darkness, anonymous. Just garbage, nothing more, nothing less.