Space Junk

I’m tired of recycling. Worse, I’m tired of not recycling, and worrying that my neighbors are not recycling (somebody threw an empty Pamper’s box in the dumpster just this week!), and that the organic buckwheat noodles I got at Trader Joe’s do not come in packaging marked #1 through 7 but excluding 6. I’m tired of amassing gigantic quantities of grocery bags, which, now that I no longer have a dog, cannot be used up in scooping poop, so that I’m forced to carry one of those reusable plastic bags on my 7 to 12 trips to the store a week.

And I’m going to have to ask the drycleaner not to put my clothes in a plastic bag. Or should I even be drycleaning? There’s an organic cleaner over on Roosevelt, but it’s sooo far away. Would the gas I use to drive there cancel out the organicness? And which laundry soap is better, the concentrated version in the smaller package, or the biodegradable one in the larger package? I’ve already switched to phosphate-free powdered dishwashing detergent, because the liquid stuff comes in plastic. But then I’ve heard paper bags are worse than plastic, so am I wrong there?

No bottled water—too much waste. No more bleach, bad for birdies and the water supply. And I guess I should stop driving around in my car with the air on and the windows open, so I can still sort of experience that I’m spending time outside.

Al, damnit, you’ve ruined it for everybody! I’ll give you an inconvenient truth—I think the Prius looks like a used bar of soap, but I’m going to have to buy one next time around whether I like it or not. I really can’t think about anything anymore without worrying about its effect on the environment. But not being a complainer (ha ha), I’ve put my trusty little brain to use and come up with at least a partial solution.

Let’s ship our waste into space!

Before you say no, let’s think about it for a minute. While most scientists—both crackpots and normals—agree that it’s likely there’s life out there somewhere, have we found any yet? After spending gazillions of dollars on space exploration, the closest we’ve come is believing there might have been water on Mars. And possibly some little microorganisms.

So why not ship our hazmat into the outer reaches? As in, beyond Earth and its holey ozone layer, where we puny earthlings reside, slathering ourselves with sunscreen for our trips to the recycling bin. We could either launch it as far as possible—without, say, accidentally blowing up the sun—or we could send it to orbit around some dark and empty place.

Pluto gets my vote. Poor thing isn’t even a planet anymore, so nobody can object. True, we don’t own Pluto, but do we own Earth? Because we’re sure junking up that nicely! I just read recently about a company in Alaska dumping raw sewage into the ocean. I kind of forgot we did that, but why should we be allowed to? Instead, let’s say we take our industrial waste, our used needles, and the rest of the 4 to 5 pounds of garbage generated by the 300 million Americans each day* to Cape Canaveral and get rid of it once and for all.

It’s sort of like the way you clean when your in-laws call and say they’re in the neighborhood, can they stop by? Unopened mail goes in the oven, dirty laundry is piled on top of the washer, toys get kicked under the sofa. Out of sight, out of mind.

As an added bonus, America, whose empire seems to be on the wane, can pioneer a new industry. China and India—so smugly manufacturing everything in the world and taking the customer service calls to boot—will quake before the financial might of the Intergalactic American Waste Management Company (NASDAQ: IAWM).

Can I be the C.E.O.? The rest of you can dress casually every day, and there will be free organic popcorn and free-trade, organic coffee in the break room. But I draw the line at that 40-grit recycled toilet paper. Girl’s gotta have her standards.


* Wikipedia.