Green Tip #6: Landfill Reduction, Part 1

Hey, everyone! How's your life going? Are you winning the war against global warming?? I know I sure am!

You might be wondering why I'm so chipper. Well, I'll tell you! I'm about to start a recurring segment, if you will. A big no-no in the green community is the concept of landfills. Although they have come a very long way since the ancient times when people threw buckets of garbage out their windows into the streets, they still aren't the ideal green solution. (I'm just assuming that people did, in fact throw buckets of garbage out their windows. Wikipedia can back me up.) So what is the green consumer to do, knowing that so much of what they purchase is ending up being buried and turned into parks and/or methane gas collecting fields?

Here's what they do: they listen to my Landfill Reduction Tips!

Landfill Reduction Tip #1 - Food waste
Many people wonder what to do with extra food they don't eat. As far as I see it, there are only three options.
1) Throw it into the garbage, where it will most likely break down in a landfill and produce methane gas, which, if the landfill is up to date, will be collected and used for commercial power.
2) Put it in the refrigerator, where it will most likely sit for a few weeks and grow mold. It will then have to be thrown away. This is similar to 1) except the refrigeration uses energy and just slows down the inevitable breaking down into methane.
3) Put it into a compost pile. Delicious garbage for worms and thus also birds. Useful for fertilizer to make crops grow stronger.

Based off these options, the choice is clear which is the greenest. None of them! Landfills are basically the devil, as evidenced by the anagram of "landfilling" - "Ill fin gland." And I don't know a single dolphin that will tell you that isn't a bad thing. So that eliminates the first two. And I don't know about you, but composting seems like a cop out. I mean really, who can't tell that composting is just a conspiracy by the pro-throwing-garbage-out-the-window lobbies in government? Composting is a huge step backwards.

But I can't just expose the problem without giving you a solution. Poke a small hole near the ceiling in one of the walls in your kitchen and start shoving your extra stuffing, popsicles, creamed corn, spoiled milk, Shrimp Tetrazzini, kosher dill pickles, red velvet cake, etc into that hole. As time goes on, that section of your kitchen wall will be stuffed full of a very green insulation. Repeat as necessary until your whole house has walls that are packed full. Just you wait and see how much your energy bill goes down!

You are probably skeptical how easy it all is, and I was too. But I did read it on Wikipedia, so I know it has to work!