Trash Can Living

Abstract

The byproducts of consumption constantly flow between ecosphere and technosphere. LCA environmental impact categories—including global warming, eutrophication, acidification, and stratospheric and tropospheric ozone—form the basis to evaluate massive torrents of material and energy and their potential to degrade ecosystems.

Waste is defined not simply as unwanted or unusable material but more broadly as “material in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Earth is the first of three “trash cans” that humankind has created as a result of its inability to deal with its waste. Illustrated examples establish the amount of land available to support us, the general magnitude of the solid waste problem, and the inherent disparity between the two.

Air, the earth’s atmosphere, is the second “can” used to take up the lighter-than-air waste byproducts created by human activity. The evidence of an increase in greenhouse gasses correlates to the pronounced rise of fossil fuel-driven industrial production since the late 1700s through the present day. CO₂, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone problems, and methane are discussed.

Water comprises the third and final “trash can” survey, from solid waste fouling our waterways that ends up slowly churning in the great Pacific gyre to agricultural and industrial chemical elements and compounds that reduce the ability of the oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and underground aquifers to support life.

Externalizing what is considered of no economic value transforms the world’s litho-hydro-atmospheres into receptacles for waste.