Recycling The Universe

32 years ago, in 1987, was the infamous story of the New York garbage barge - the MOBRO 4000. The town of Islip, New York had run out of landfill area. One enterprising idea was hatched. Load the garbage on a barge and ship it to a North Carolina landfill. 3000 tons of trash were loaded as a "trial run". However, the media and the people of North Carolina got wind of it. Fearing that the trash had hospital waste in it (proven not to be true later), the state refused. The barge was diverted to as far south as Louisiana, then to Mexico, whose navy threatened the barge with artillery. Belize refused it as well. The barge, now internationally the most watched garbage carrier, clearly a phenomenal precursor to reality shows long before such a concept was even a TV idea, continued to find a home for its cargo. Ultimately, it went back to where it came from where the entire trash was incinerated. That barge incident prompted all kinds of laws and regulation on trash disposal. Green Peace, ever mindful of whatever publicity stunt they can get, draped  across the barge a white banner that said, "Next time ... Try Recycling".

I got to thinking one morning as I was pulling the draw strings on the plastic bag of recycled items for the weekly pick up/collection by the local waste management company. Regular trash is collected twice a week. However, on Fridays, two different trucks come: one to collect trash and the other for recycled items. It shows that more trash than recycled items are put out. Or, maybe it is simply for the convenience and well being of households that would rather have standard trash that begin to decompose (and stink) picked up twice more frequently than odor-free and non-decomposing recycled items. We do ours only once weekly - on Fridays - because the composting bin takes a good chunk of the trash - banana peels, fruit and vegetable scraps, etc.

Well and good. Folks feel good to play a role in recycling and composting. Twice weekly, trash disappears at the curb - out of sight, out of mind as soon as the garbage trucks leave. The urban American household goes through this routine every week. Small trash cans from room to room, bathrooms and kitchen, are emptied into a bigger trash can in the back of the house or garage. Once or twice weekly the big trash can/s make a short journey to the curb. By late afternoon, early evening, sometimes the following morning, the trash can/s are trekked back to where they were and the weekly cycle begins again.

This is repeated across the country and in all of the developed "first world" around the globe. The third world countries do their best to deal with it. But the problem is not so trivial, however. Far from it. 

Today, New York (the entire state) gets rid of 7 MOBRO barge worth of compacted garbage everyday. They are trucked hundreds of miles into landfills in Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc. It is a huge business, an enterprise that used to be part of the mob's money making scheme. It is all legit now.  

Then, just recently as a month ago, we have the Canada - Philippines garbage dispute. In 2013-2014 Vancouver shipped 103 shipping-containers worth of supposedly recyclable plastics. It turned out it had household waste in them. It is waiting to be settled.

Landfill. It is today deemed the only "ideal" solution. One New Jersey landfill is now a golf course. Incineration is another while a not so well known idea that is catching on is recovering methane gas from decomposing trash from landfills. It actually works.

The question is this. Do we ever really get rid of anything? Does anything really disappear into nothingness? No. The universe does not allow it. 

The bottom line. Nothing disappears. Tons and tons of plastic that people thought they got rid of by throwing them away are in the oceans, on the beaches, in stomachs of fish, whales and birds. They are on the streets, subway cars, railroad tracks, even on less traveled roads, even in national parks. Outer space is not immune either. Circling around the globe today are space junk traveling at several miles per second, thousands of feet above the atmosphere - leftover material from countless space launches from since more than half a century ago and still going on today.

If you picked it up (no pun intended) from the previous musing I have fervent hopes the readers are by now convinced that nothing really ever gets lost in the universe.  The universe does not throw away anything into nothingness - it is the ultimate recycling agent.
  

Our sun is at least a second generation star. The universe is 13+ billion years old.  Half that time ago our solar system did not exist. Not in its present form of a sun at the center, 8 or 9 planets (we feel bad for Pluto) around it, millions of asteroids, several comets, the Oort Cloud, The Kuiper Belt, etc. All of what we see and know as the Solar System today came from recycled material, from left over space dust to hydrogen gas and other debris.  I will not go nerdy with the readers but suffice it to say that there is a strong theoretical basis for why  our sun came out of recycled material. I am tempted to give a detailed explanation of it but I will muzzle the urge.

Now, to this thought. Long before the word "re-purpose" became a recycling buzz word, the universe had been re-purposing cosmic leftovers and discarded material into new structures, from which came this tiny patch we call our world.

From that little world was created a thinking population that today continues to wonder, to question, to postulate, to be in awe and oblivious at the same time, to introspect but often take things for granted. As part of the total world population, those who recycle are a tiny segment. Much had been said, we've been lectured, we're inundated with calls for action from well meaning activists, politicians and policy makers. We heard it but, alternatively, to balance our perspective, let's look at how explicit or implicit recycling is defined from an unlikely but infrequently visited alternative source these days - The Bible - and its take on recycling:

First, from the creation of man:

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.           Genesis 2:7, KJV (King James Version)

Then, carefully read the verse below:

"If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust."      Job 34:14-15, KJV

And then ... 

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."     
Genesis 3:19, KJV

Widely known and taken as Gospel truth, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is actually nowhere to be found  in the Bible; a poetic  expression perhaps, "Ashes to ashes", but it has no theological basis, where the Scripture is concerned. The Genesis 3:19 quote is the closest we will get.

Now ...

Ground burial is widely accepted today, regardless of religion or culture. Cremation, though still by a small percentage, is accepted as well.

In not so ancient culture in Tibet, Mongolia and parts of China, people, mostly Buddhists practiced what was called, "sky burial".  

"Sky burial is a funeral practice in which a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements or to be eaten by scavenging animals, especially carrion birds. It is a specific type of the general practice of excarnation".

The last word is an interesting one, although Google red lined it when I typed it on this essay, but it is likely the opposite of reincarnation.  As we know, the Buddhist religion adheres to it.

The practice is now frowned upon by society in general but it was not too long ago that sky burial was in fact a tourist attraction in some remote places.  There are video and photo images of it online.

There is no definitive explanation for the origin of sky burial. In some cases, it is explained that in the mountainous though tree-less regions of Tibet, where timber is a luxury and the ground too hard to dig up, particularly in winter, the practice was more out of pragmatism.  On the other hand, it is also noted that offering the body of the departed to be consumed by other living creatures is the ultimate act of generosity by the departed that only enhances the process of reincarnation, for those who believe in it.

When all is said and done, but not to be philosophically flippant about it, ground burial achieves the same result where decomposition is the task of other living creatures - microbes, earthworms, and others - which consume the buried body until it is returned to the soil. Dust to dust. 

I know this is not a pleasant topic to be thinking about but it is  meaningful when taken in the context of a far more profound truth. The truth about the impermanence of everything physical. It makes us pause to take stock of the insouciant accumulation of material things or the worship of material possessions to the exclusion,  perhaps, of a far deeper introspection  or search for the meaning of or reason for why we are here.

Read the quote from Genesis 2:7 (above) one more time. Think about it. Each of us will take it differently, ignore it, be indifferent to it, even disagree with it, or have no opinion. Remember though that the fact that we have an opinion, or choose not to have one, makes us individually unique. But there is a common bond. Every living creature has connection, one to the other - from single cell organisms to simple plants like algae and fungi, to termites and small rodents and giant elephants and whales that ultimately lead to us - because one way or the other we are all part of both the natural and spiritual ecology that is the universe.

The universe does not waste anything. Whenever and wherever it can, it will recycle. Whether we are here or not.