Trash Only?
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Friedrich Nietzsche
I finally loaded up my car with the pile of items I had collected for recycling over many months. Now, in my car I followed the voice of the navigation system leading me to the nearest recycling station. Following the directions, I was filled with hope and desire to unload and recycle responsibly the odd selection of items that filled my car: old socks worn to threads, a pair of work pants beyond repair and some underwear washed thin — each with some percentage of plastic fiber. Then there was the bird feeder with a metal post and a wooden structure on top. The structure was so rusty that even Goodwill rejected it. There were also some pieces of styrofoam, an old cheese grater with plastic pieces that had disintegrated over the years into crumbs just like the cheese, and a small bag full of empty batteries. I felt excited about the prospect of recycling these items. I am not a big shopper. I am a diligent recycler, composter, reuser. I hate waste and yet, here I was with my share ready to unload out of my life.
I stopped at the entry of the recycling center and was greeted by a friendly person in a bright yellow safety west wearing a single use disposable face mask. “Have a good day mam” was my cue to step on the gas and enter the recycling station. I mumbled a “Thank you” and entered the terrain of hope and salvation for unloading my traces of consumption.
I saw a big sign for scrap metal and one for lithium batteries and old electronics. There was a container for the usual recyclables and a big container for Trash Only. There was no dedicated place to recycle fabrics, regular household batteries or styrofoam. “That goes in the Trash Only container,” I was told by the on-site attendant.
I left the bird feeder at the scrap metal station feeling a bit guilty since the top was made of wood.
“What about the cheese grater?” The plastic pieces had fallen off during the car ride and the metal parts were left — clearly qualifying for the scrap metal section.
I looked at the other items in the back of my car and felt a mix of defeat, shame, guilt and frustration. All these items I had collected thinking I had saved them from the landfill, now would end up exactly there. One arm load at a time I walked the 10 yards of shame between my car and the Trash Only container, my steps slow and heavy, my breath labored. As I dropped the bag of fabrics into the container I felt like I had tossed my idea or illusion that there would be a future use for these fabrics. I had seen a bright future for these as house insulation, or, perhaps, recycled into new fabrics. What a waste!
The next bag was filled with batteries. Maybe they will invent a way to extract fuel and metals from our generation’s landfills just the same way we extracted these sources from the earth. I caught my own hipo-crazy — “Look we, your parents, are giving you, our children, this challenge and opportunity to deal with our mess — isn’t that wonderful! But please make sure to clean up your dishes after dinner and make your bed like I told you oh and don’t idle the car. It isn’t good for the environment…”
The next armful I carried from my car to the Trash Only container felt the heaviest of all: styrofoam packaging molds. So white, so fluffy and such a one way street. I carried the weight of consequences from ordering an air filter online during the pandemic — the irony. Every step felt heavy and my body suddenly remembered the feeling of walking to confession on a Sunday morning as a child before my first communion. The shame, the defeat and feeling of not being good enough “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word … ” (Matthew 8:8.) Suddenly I remembered the words and the feeling that came along with it. I wasn’t a tall 8-year-old but wondered what would make me worthy?
With each approach of the Trash Only container I noticed a creeping fear getting louder. The sign suddenly felt personal, as if it said “Look at you,Erika Senft Miller, this sign is for you not your stuff YOU are Trash Only!”
I arrived at the dumpster, leaned my whole body forward, arms reaching out, carefully as not to drop any of the wiggly wushshhh into the depth of the container: it flew, white and light, silently landing like an insect on a leaf. I exhaled and felt the weight lifting, just as it did after confession when I was eight.
Did the container hold more than Trash Only? Was it a receptacle that also absorbed the weight of my complicated emotions. Should I have been more careful with those socks?
I imagined for a brief moment what I would do if this container that held room for the consequences of irresponsible decisions for a whole community wasn’t there.
“Sorry no room for YOUR trash, Erika Senft Miller.”
I imagined standing there with my arms filled with shaped styrofoam packaging and having to take it back to my car, drive it back home and live with it for the rest of my life. I almost started crying.
In the meantime, three more people walked briskly by me. Each dumped their bags in the container and were back in their cars before I had finished my thought. The act of unloading their trash seemed such an everyday activity, done while talking on the phone on the way to work — tangential and not worth mentioning at dinner.
I envied them for the ease of their actions. Actually, that’s not really true. I thought more about how a big container for Trash Only holds so much more than our trash and how grateful I am for all the people who deal with our refuse, our sins and the consequences of our actions. And then I thought how one experience holds so many qualities and so many different ways of experiencing it. There is guilt and gratitude all mixed up just like the content of the Trash Only container that holds torn work pants and socks, styrofoam and the empty paper coffee cup from my car I threw in for good measure before I left. The interior of my car was empty and trash free while my brain was still reeling and my stomach flip-flopping, with memories of church, the tight confession booth, mixed with the now fresh air blowing through my open car window.
