56
a container until there was no water left in it. As soon as the person drinking from it
was no longer thirsty, it became unnecessary. At that moment, it instantly became
waste. The same is true for all food packaging as well as airborne and waterborne
microplastic fibers used in clothing, cosmetics, and many other mass-produced consumer products (Cox et al. 2019).
Contrary to the perceptions of the average consumer, who casually discards it,
the plastic bottle didn’t disappear. It continued on long after it was empty. The same
durability that held the water in without disintegrating keeps this synthetic compound from returning to its constituent parts, chemical elements available for use by
other living beings without harming them. The plastic container might be buffeted
by sun, wind, waves, and sand for years. It might get broken into smaller and smaller
pieces of plastic that spread out for miles but remains, although fragmented and
disbursed, essentially the same. Fish and birds that eat these plastic pieces are not
fed by them. And these pieces and particles as well as other smaller foreign elements now exist where they were never found before. Living systems cannot integrate them; they can only do harm in inappropriate contexts.
3.6.1 Feedback Loops Affecting Solids, Liquids, and Gasses
Broadly dividing the earth’s ecosphere into its discreet solid-lithospheric, liquidhydrospheric, and gas-atmospheric components helps to conceptualize and measure
the toll human activity takes on each of them. In every complex closed system,
however, dynamic effects in one part of the system affect and influence those in
other parts. As we produce and consume, the negative effects our waste creates in
any one of the three “garbage cans” are constantly overflowing their boundaries into
one or both of the other two.
Interacting positive feedback loops between the three have changed nature’s selfregulating processes. The net effect of our actions, impacting the world’s solids,
liquids, and gasses that sustain all life, is what some label “anthropogenic” or
human-caused climate change. Solid waste and liquid compound chemicals, which
are not successfully sequestered, flow incessantly from our shores to pollute the
oceans. They change the water’s chemistry, kill aquatic life, and are adding a new
stratum of human processed trash to the ocean floor. Some components of gaseous
waste carried in the atmosphere, responsible for long-term climate change, migrate
back into both solid ground and moving waters, causing other faster-acting problems through acidification.
Over months and years, the atmosphere mixes with the oceans. As moisture is
continuously carried up through evaporation and returned by way of rainstorms on
both land and sea, clouds become more acidic as they take up increased carbon
dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides released from burning coal, oil, and
natural gasses. The same substances that directly affect human health in the form of
ground-level smog travel high into the atmosphere to mix with water and oxygen
and other elements that eventually fall back to earth in the form of acid rain.
Rain mixes with soil and freshwater on land and salt water in the ocean increasing acidity over time. As soils become more acidic, their capacity to support plant
3 Trash Can Living
a container until there was no water left in it. As soon as the person drinking from it
was no longer thirsty, it became unnecessary. At that moment, it instantly became
waste. The same is true for all food packaging as well as airborne and waterborne
microplastic fibers used in clothing, cosmetics, and many other mass-produced consumer products (Cox et al. 2019).
Contrary to the perceptions of the average consumer, who casually discards it,
the plastic bottle didn’t disappear. It continued on long after it was empty. The same
durability that held the water in without disintegrating keeps this synthetic compound from returning to its constituent parts, chemical elements available for use by
other living beings without harming them. The plastic container might be buffeted
by sun, wind, waves, and sand for years. It might get broken into smaller and smaller
pieces of plastic that spread out for miles but remains, although fragmented and
disbursed, essentially the same. Fish and birds that eat these plastic pieces are not
fed by them. And these pieces and particles as well as other smaller foreign elements now exist where they were never found before. Living systems cannot integrate them; they can only do harm in inappropriate contexts.
3.6.1 Feedback Loops Affecting Solids, Liquids, and Gasses
Broadly dividing the earth’s ecosphere into its discreet solid-lithospheric, liquidhydrospheric, and gas-atmospheric components helps to conceptualize and measure
the toll human activity takes on each of them. In every complex closed system,
however, dynamic effects in one part of the system affect and influence those in
other parts. As we produce and consume, the negative effects our waste creates in
any one of the three “garbage cans” are constantly overflowing their boundaries into
one or both of the other two.
Interacting positive feedback loops between the three have changed nature’s selfregulating processes. The net effect of our actions, impacting the world’s solids,
liquids, and gasses that sustain all life, is what some label “anthropogenic” or
human-caused climate change. Solid waste and liquid compound chemicals, which
are not successfully sequestered, flow incessantly from our shores to pollute the
oceans. They change the water’s chemistry, kill aquatic life, and are adding a new
stratum of human processed trash to the ocean floor. Some components of gaseous
waste carried in the atmosphere, responsible for long-term climate change, migrate
back into both solid ground and moving waters, causing other faster-acting problems through acidification.
Over months and years, the atmosphere mixes with the oceans. As moisture is
continuously carried up through evaporation and returned by way of rainstorms on
both land and sea, clouds become more acidic as they take up increased carbon
dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides released from burning coal, oil, and
natural gasses. The same substances that directly affect human health in the form of
ground-level smog travel high into the atmosphere to mix with water and oxygen
and other elements that eventually fall back to earth in the form of acid rain.
Rain mixes with soil and freshwater on land and salt water in the ocean increasing acidity over time. As soils become more acidic, their capacity to support plant
3 Trash Can Living