As I'm sitting here in my motel room waking before heading off to work this morning, I'm looking around and thinking about one of the themes of my blog...Recycle, Repurpose, Reuse. My entire life, this has been something I never gave a rats behind about, just like the rest of our society. I just made my first cup of coffee for the day. It is from a single serve machine that uses a plastic tray to hold the coffee pack. That single serve tray was kept fresh (before I opened and threw it away) by a sealed plastic bag. I am now drinking my favorite morning beverage from a styrofoam cup. This is a daily routine not only for myself but for everyone in this motel. This routine is not only for everyone in this motel but also the motel next to it and the next one and the next one. All over this country people are making motel coffee from non biodegradable containers and tossing the remains into the little plastic bag that magically disappears by the time we return to our rooms at the end of the day. Because everything disappears we don't think a lick about what happens to it all. Our landfills continue to pile higher. We continue to create more landfills so we can pile even more non biodegradable stuff into them. 1000 years from now all of that stuff will still be in those landfill plus so many more yet to come. Did you know there is so much stuff we throw out that talk has even started about jettisoning our trash into space? After not thinking, and taking my consumerism for granted my entire life, I just find that absurd. Not only are we going to pollute our own planet to extinction, we are now thinking of polluting our galaxy. Man is a wasteful creature. Before I am accused of being on a soapbox, I am every bit as guilty as everyone else of this crime against nature. It is no wonder our planet is now fighting back against our wastefulness. Not only do we toss everything we have ever made to the curb, we take resources from the planet that sustains us at an ever increasing pace. Oil drilling, minerals, fracking, the list goes on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not and have never been a tree hugger. In fact, if it hadn't been for Kitty slowly pointing all of this out to me over the years, I still wouldn't be thinking about this. Somehow, this has to stop at some point. Somehow, we as a people have to learn to live in harmony with our planet that hosts us, rather than exploit it. We have to have stuff. We have to keep up with the Jones. If somebody buys something, we have to buy bigger. If a marketing advertisement tells us we need something, we go out and get it only to use it a couple of times then watch it magically disappear when we tire of it, or it breaks, or we finish the contents inside the container we bought. Did you know that man is the only creature of our planet that pays to live here. Go figure. Somehow, we have to lessen our waste. Somehow we have to learn to live in harmony with the earth, rather than find a way to move on to the next planet after we have destroyed this one. Yes, this is what our desire to go to Mars is all about. Somehow we have to learn to be the caretakers of our world, just as Adam and Eve were originally put here for.

 

It is now time for me to go down to the lobby and eat my breakfast using a styrofoam plate and plastic utensils only to toss them into the big plastic bag in the corner. They, along with all of the other guests trash will magically disappear by the time we start it all over again tomorrow.

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Recycle, Repurpose, Reuse