My partner Cynda Green invited a couple of neighbors over for dinner last night, to share a pot of the “Norwegian Chili” — a recipe Cynda’s mother had handed down to her.
I volunteered to make the cornbread. (I did not get the cornbread recipe from my mother, even though she used to make a delicious cornbread. My mother’s recipe is unfortunately lost to the sands of time. But the New York Times shared a very decent recipe on the internet.)
While preparing the cornbread, I noticed Cynda’s 13-gallon trash can was getting full, so I set aside the bowl of buttermilk for a moment and carried the trash out to her garage, where the plastic bags of trash keep company until it’s time for a trip to the County transfer station on Trujillo Road.
I’ve written the occasional editorial about garbage, here in the Daily Post — and I am referring here to the physical garbage that ends up on the County Landfill, not the political garbage that we might hear about during a government meeting, for example. One of those editorials focused on the use of plastic bottles. Another touched on the subject of government waste products.
One of the articles began with this quote:
A new report from the World Bank’s Urban Development department estimates the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) will rise from the current 1.3 billion tonnes per year to 2.2 billion tonnes per year by 2025. Much of the increase will come in rapidly growing cities in developing countries.
— from the World Bank website, 2012: Report Shows Alarming Rise in Amount, Costs of Garbage
Here in Pagosa, most of our physical garbage ends up in the Archuleta County Landfill, located on the way to Trujillo and overlooking the beautiful San Juan River.
We learned, this past week, the estimated price of a new landfill, as part of the Archuleta County budget presentation. We — the Pagosa Springs Area residents and visitors — are slowly filling up our designated government-run dump, and we’ll be paying for the development of a new landfill sometime in the next ten years or so.
From the County budget presentation on December 12, at which the 2019 budget was approved:
According to these calculations, the Archuleta County government will fork out somewhere in the neighborhood of $9.2 million, over the next decade or so, to fund the development of a new landfill. This amount is, of course, on top of the money spent on new government facilities, new government vehicles, and things like road and bridge maintenance.
The collection of plastic trash bags keeping company in Cynda’s garage will soon contribute to the need for this new landfill.
Cynda typically makes an effort to sort her trash, and separate out the items that can be “recycled.” Aluminum. Glass. Cardboard. Paper. Plastic. Quite a few items can be sorted into the “recycle” bins at the County Transfer Station, although we know that not all of them actually get “recycled.” Once upon a time, here in Archuleta County — about 20 years ago — we thought recycling would eventually become a cost-effective way to dispose of certain items. That’s not how things are turning out, due in part to new economic policies in China — formerly the destination for much of the world’s recyclable materials.
And so this is Christmas, and another chance to purchase and give away numerous consumer products packaged in cardboard and plastic.
I wondered, as I awoke this morning, whether the cardboard and paper used to package our Christmas boxes this year will contribute to the destruction of the environment in a meaningful way — the environment which we hope can sustain our children and grandchildren far into the future.
I have the impression that forests play a major role in the cleansing and recycling of our global atmosphere. But are we cutting down the world’s forests to wrap Christmas presents?
And if so, what does that mean, in terms of earth’s future?
North America did a pretty good job of cutting down our old growth forests between 1620 and 1920. We can safely assume most of this lumber went into building construction, rather than into the manufacture of cardboard boxes.
The wetlands and forests have made a partial comeback since 1920, although none of the “new” forests in the US can be classified as “old growth.” The USGS and Forest Service collaborated on the following map, which shows overall vegetation estimates in 2006:
How much of our forests are going into Christmas packages?
I ran across an article on the Science magazine website that discusses the disappearance of forests all around the world. Turns out the destruction of the world’s forests is now taking place mostly in the more tropical parts of the globe, and the permanent deforestation — as opposed to temporary deforestation — appears to be largely due to industrial farming and the demand for palm oil.
From that article:
A new analysis of global forest loss — the first to examine not only where forests are disappearing, but also why — reveals just how much industrial agriculture is contributing to the loss. The answer: some 5 million hectares — the area of Costa Rica — every year. And despite years of pledges by companies to help reduce deforestation, the amount of forest cleared to plant oil palm and other booming crops remained steady between 2001 and 2015.
For the new analysis, the non-profit Sustainability Consortium in Fayetteville, Arkansas trained a computer program to recognize five causes of forest loss in satellite images:
- wildfire
- logging of tree plantations
- large-scale agriculture
- small-scale agriculture
- urbanization
To design the software, programmer Phillip Curtis spent weeks staring at thousands of images from Google Earth that showed deforestation with a known cause.
“It was the most distressing part of the work,” he says, especially when looking at Southeast Asia. “The scale of the loss was staggering…”
All told, about 27% of the total loss between 2001 and 2015 was due to large-scale farming and ranching, Curtis and his colleagues report today in Science. Such farming includes industrial plantations for palm oil, a valuable biofuel and a major ingredient in food, cosmetics, and other products.
According to the Science article, forests cleared for plantations is “gone for good, whereas forest cleared for other purposes, including small-scale farming, typically grows back.” Urbanization, which also contributes to permanent deforestation, made up just 1% of the total loss of forest.
The report did not provide any specific information about paper and cardboard production, much to my dismay. So I’m left wondering whether my Christmas packages will contribute, ultimately, to a tree-less future for my grandchildren.
They took all the trees, put ’em in a tree museum…
— ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ by Joni Mitchell
I wonder about that, as a carry out the trash.