Sunday, I led a discussion group at our Unitarian Universalist fellowship, on garbage. I chose the topic and title of the talk from Elizabeth Royte's best seller "Garbage Land: The secret trail of trash." If you throw things away, this book is for you.

I didn't have the book with me - just a print out of the cover. I told the group of about 30 or so that I had loaned the book to my one friend who might actually read a book on garbage. Garbage Land is brilliant. It's a fast-paced, engaging and extremely enlightening story of one woman's investigative journey through the land of garbage and over-consumption.

I emailed Ms. Royte last week. I told her I had spoken to a group of extremely uninformed 3rd graders in the spring and that this time I would be speaking on the same topics (bottled water, plastic bags, over-consumption, etc.) but to a group of of adults. She wrote back:

Talking to kids in schools can be a bit discouraging. Even if they "get" what you're talking about, they're not the ones making decisions about buying recycled paper or nontoxic cleaning products or arguing with the custodian to set out bins for recycling. But your talk this weekend is to grownups. I think it's important, as you say in your book, that people understand individual actions DO matter, especially if a lot of people do them, and they do them over a long time. Try to give some examples of positive change (look at things states and local organizations have done for the environment - not the federal government...).

Also I think it's important that people make the connection between their buying/living habits and upstream impacts. Garbage Land is about the back end, the downstream side, but what we put on the curb is just the tip of the materials iceberg. Everything we buy comes from the earth, at some point, and we have to understand the enormous amounts of energy it takes, upstream, to make this stuff, and the water and air pollution generated. (If you read my book you know all about the negative impacts of landfills and incinerators.) Buy with the environment in mind - upstream and down.

From her email and from her book, Ms. Royte is clear that there is only one solution to the garbage problem (and it ain't recycling): Buy less stuff.

The Vice President of a New York City waste transfer station is slightly more pessimistic. He tells Ms. Royte, "You want to solve the garbage problem? Stop eating. Stop living."

For most people (in developed countries), buying less stuff is almost as hard as stopping eating and stopping living...