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Garbage Land
Writer
Elizabeth Royte invites us to follow her on a trek into the
garbage cans, dumpsters, landfills, sewer plants, and refuse
piles of our country. Sift through the piles of dirty
diapers, plastic bags, and discarded wrappers and containers
that are accumulating under the surface of the earth in our
landfills. Royte asks a simple question: What happens to my
trash, my recycling, and the stuff I flush down the toilet?
Her answers are frightening because her answers are the
same answers for each and every American. We are each
responsible for creating increasing amounts of garbage that
threaten our personal and our planet’s wellbeing.
Elizabeth Royte
Ms.
Royte’s previous book, The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Solving the
Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest won the New York Time
Notable Book of the Year award for 2001. Her writing has
appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic,
The New
Yorker, Smithsonian, and other publications. Her work was
included in The Best American Science Writing 2004.
The Challenge of
Sustainability
Moraine Valley Community College is committed to
understanding our impact on the environment and how we
(faculty, staff, students and the local community) can make
changes to have positive results for the future.
Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. As an institution, we
foresee our sustainability goals to impart education for a
sustainable society that fosters the development of
knowledge, ethics, and the skills necessary to make choices
and decisions that will enhance our quality of life without
damaging the planet for future generations.
About the One
Book, One College Program
For thousands of years,
humans have used stories to communicate knowledge about the
world. Stories provide contexts for our understanding of
facts, emotions, discoveries, history, relationships, and
all kinds of human interaction.
For
this reason, the Moraine Valley Library and the Moraine
Valley Bookstore invite all members of the Moraine Valley
community to come together to discuss a selected story in
the One Book, One College program. Join us in discussing a
selected story so that we may share knowledge across
disciplines, exchange new ideas on useful topics, and enrich
our curriculum in new ways.
Check it out at the
Library!
Buy it at the Bookstore!
Read the book!
Bring your views!
Join the discussion!
For more
information on our
schedule of events, call (708) 974-5709
or e-mail
swanson@morainevalley.edu. |
“Pawing through every single
item in my kitchen trash bag to
quantify my output, I hit upon a
garbage fundamental almost
instantly: the worst things we
threw out were the things that
had once been alive. Organics
rendered everything in the can
loathsome to touch and
smell...Food waste was making
my trash heavy and wet.
Leftover spaghetti coated the
plastic break bags, eggshells
dripped albumen on the jelly
jars” (pp. 105-106).
“Since 1960, the nation’s
municipal waste stream has
nearly tripled, reaching a
reported peak of 369 million
tons in 2002. That’s more stuff,
per capita, than any other
nation in the world...The
increase is due partly to the
increased population but mostly
to the habits of average
residents, who now throw out,
says the EPA, 4.5 pounds of
garbage per person per day—
1.8 more pounds than forty-five
years ago.” (p. 11) |
