On my way to class last week, I suddenly became aware of a nearby smoker. I hadn’t seen a cigarette or heard the rasp of a lighter. Rather, I had inhaled a puff of their smoke. This air had quite naturally traveled in and out of their lungs and then in and out of mine. The only reason I’d taken notice of this routine occurrence was because the air had been tagged. I pondered this for a while and then reasoned that we all inhale each other’s exhalations all the time, but most of us don’t notice it or stop to acknowledge it.
The air you breathe is the same air I breathe. The water you sip in class originated as a gasp of air. The nourishment you receive from a carrot is due to your body’s ability to use that carrot to build your cells. You don’t just eat the carrot, the carrot becomes you. The calcium molecules in your bones may have eroded from a mountain millions of years ago, traveled through a stream, been consumed by a moose and used to construct his antlers. Hundreds of years later, it may have become part of the soil and then been absorbed by and incorporated into the spinach that you ate for dinner last night. At first glance, a mountain, a stream, a moose and spinach seem to have nothing in common. This however, is not the case.
Your body may seem separate from your neighbor’s, the oceans, the mountains and the forests, but again, this is not the case. At any given moment there are thousands of molecules flowing through you, me, your dog, rocks, the air and the oceans. Occasionally some of these molecules will become stationary for a period of time, as part of your arm, for example; but over the expanse of time, they’re all cycling, continuously. You are literally a mixture of animals, oceans, mountains and atmosphere.
Not only are you inseparable from your surroundings, but we are all unmistakably connected, and we are just one little piece of this big wet rock we call home. So even though it may not seem evident, what you do affects us all.
The garbage you take to your curbside may be hauled to an incinerator. In fact, if you live in York County, it most likely will be taken to an incinerator. Much of Southern Maine’s solid waste travels to the Maine Energy Recovery Company (MERC) in what has been referred to as “Trash Town, USA,” or Biddeford, ME. Many incinerators produce air pollution and toxic waste. Smoke stacks from incinerators may emit carbon dioxide, which is related to global warming and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, which may lead to acid rain. Incinerators also produce concentrations of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury which contaminate our oceans and our fish.
All around us, and even through us, the earth is continually recycling its possessions. If the earth recycles, why shouldn’t we? This semester’s calculus notes could be next year’s yoga fliers. This morning’s egg shells and bread crusts could be next spring’s gardening soil. Today’s soup cans could be tomorrow’s newly constructed highway bridge. Your initiative is not insignificant, it affects the whole world.
It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not that hard to do, you just need to set up a system. In most cases, your town will already have systems for you. If you are unsure of where to go in your area, go to maine.gov and search for “recycling centers,” or go directly to the state’s online list at http://mainegov-images.informe.org/spo/recycle/municipaldata/data/2003/RecyclingCenters.pdf.
Once you get started, you’ll probably feel pretty good about being part of something larger than yourself. Since we are all part of the many systems that make up one large system, it seems only natural that we follow the earth’s lead and contribute to the global cycle.