Note: This post is 683 words, excluding this note. It’s not 500 but it’s the best I could do. It started at 1000. I refuse to cut any more!!!!!!!

After writing up my morning post about my trash quest, I opened up my bag of collected trash and plastics. It was time to see what I had. I haven’t thrown anything away, except for a broken, metal door hinge. I regret throwing it away.

I examined my trash, and found a few things. There was paper of various kinds, mostly paper from mail. That’s recycleable. Easy. It’s not compostable because it contains small amounts of plastic film that act as a window, to see the sender’s address.

I had a poster from Gibson Garage that was not laminated, and so recycleable as paper.

Then, there was plastic. Strange hard items, rigid plastic like trays and containers, and then a lot of plastic film/bags. The plastic film I found could be recycled at a few grocery stores near me. The Publix was the closest, so I took my bag of plastic and set off to investigate.

Now, I was successful. They did accept plastic bags and plastic wrap at a recycling bin at Publix. That was most of my plastic. Great. But then…

When you see it, when your eyes are opened, to the scale and scope of the problem, you cannot unsee it. It’s like being in The Matrix.

I walked into the Publix. I wanted to see what I could buy, without acquiring any plastic.

The answer was, nothing.

Nothing at all.

I was supposed to be in a place for buying food. I was in a grocery store.

Yet, all I saw was plastic.

A sea of single-use plastics: shrink wrap, bags, rigid containers, stickers—everything encased in plastic.

This is the problem, people.

Now, that was bad. That was horrifying, even. But what was worse?

On my walk back home, I picked up 9 plastic bottles.

I picked up other pieces of trash as well. Wrappers, food containers. With each piece of plastic litter, my rage was rising. And then?

The literal icing on the cake, was an actual cake.

I saw it up ahead in the road. Two plastic bags, fluttering in the street.

I approached. One bag had half of a cake in it, in a rigid plastic container. The other bag had a bundle of bananas.

Hundreds of ants were swarming the cake. I decided to dump it, let the ants feast. I took the bananas with me to put in my compost hole.

I took the stickers off the bananas. They’re plastic, and won’t degrade. The cake I was disgusted with, and I threw that plastic away. I should have gone farther and cleaned it, and added the rigid plastic container to my collection. I threw the bananas in my compost hole.

This pissed me off. I was getting angry. I found two cans and two bottles on the last minute of my walk.

Now I was really fired up. I wasn’t done. I knew that our trash can itself would be full of recycleable and compostable trash. Why? Because of our roommate.

The dude chugs Dr. Pepper like his life depends on it. Like it’s his Holy Elixir of Everlasting Life. And he throws all of those cans in the trash.

I talked to him about it. I’m not angry with him is because he’s absent-minded. He doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

The biggest reason why we should not allow these permanent items out in the world, in the size and scope that they are: Even if they can be meticulously recycled, there will be people who don’t do that, or things that go wrong. And they will end up in the environment.

I pulled four Dr. Pepper cans out of the trash. Then, there was mailing waste. That could be recycled. Paper towel waste, and two chunks of bell peppers: compostable.

Parker and I haven’t been using paper towels for months. We just use rags instead. But the other roommate bought some recently.

This is the trash quest I am on. The size and scope of the problem is huge, y’all. But we have to do it. We have to solve this.