Dumpsters. I think they're so cool as objects in themselves and simultaneously so significant as a symbol of our philosophy. Use, consume, throw it out, out of sight, out of mind, tie it up in a bag, wrap it up in plastic and haul it off, bury it, forget about it, do it again next week. No connection to the land and the cycle of growth and decay. Mix it all together and hide it. Everything goes in the dumpster. If something you threw out had any potential use for someone else it is designated garbage once it gets in the dumpster. It's the omega of American society.
Lars Eighner wrote a terrific piece on
dumpsters but unfortunately he hasn't got it up on his page. It's from his book
Travels with Lizbeth,
which I recommend. My friend Qani Belul in Japan also wrote an
article on dumpsters that I'd like to cite but again, it's not on the web.
I have no pat solution. I guess everyone will have to come up with their own solution to garbage disposal.
There are some good steps being made, like recycling programs and municipalities which collect organic material to make into mulch and compost. Maybe we have to look back to places where people are very poor and do use everything to its utmost before seeking a suitable place for disposal.
I don't deny the need to discard things which are no longer useful, but I deplore rather the wastefulness of our culture where we throw things out that are still good or can be useful to someone else perhaps, or we throw things out in a way which hampers their ability to be broken down as efficiently as possible. And dumpsters happen to be symbolic of that. Besides changing my own ways of use and disposal, I photograph and write about dumpsters in hopes of making everyone else allergic to dumpsters.
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