index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 7. Let's not be wasteful > To Live is To Make Trash

To Live is To Make Trash

Let's talk a little about trash. What do you think of when you hear the word "garbage"?

A garbage can? Your mother telling you to take out the trash? The collection bins for empty cans and bottles?

To start with, what is "garbage"? Things that are no longer needed or no longer usable, right?

In that case, is the box that your candy comes in garbage? While the candy is in the box, it serves a necessary purpose--as "a container for candy." But the instant that the candy is all eaten up, the box turns into something "unnecessary."

Let's say you were eating some bread but decided you were too full to finish the rest, and so you threw it away. Was the bread garbage? If you answer "yes," that means that you were eating garbage! (That's not true, is it?!)

There is so no such thing as something that starts out as garbage. Something is needed and so it exists, but when that particular item is finished serving its function--or so long as we think it has--it becomes something that is no longer needed.

In that sense, for all living things, to be alive means to produce garbage continuously. Let's think about our bodies. In order to stay alive, we inhale, right? The oxygen from the air is taken into the body, and in exchange, we exhale the unnecessary carbon dioxide.

In order to protect your head, each strand of hair grows 0.5 millimeters each day for 2 to 5 years, and then they eventually fall out. The hair that falls out is no longer needed. And, in order to stay alive, we eat food and our body absorbs what it needs, but the stuff that your body doesn't need goes into the toilet, does it?

But not only humans make garbage. When lions are done feeding on their prey, they leave the bones. These bones are the lion's "garbage."

Plants, too, make garbage. A plant creates nourishment with its leaves by using light from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air, but at the same time, it gives off oxygen, which is the plant's "garbage." And, old leaves that can't be used fall off the tree or plant stalk. Maybe this is how it throws out its garbage.

To live is to make trash.

It is said that the first living thing was born on earth 3.5 billion years ago. From that time onward, living things have always made garbage. But there had never been a time when there was no more room on earth for trash. From a historical point of view, it is only very recently that garbage has become a problem. Why is this?

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