Dave, actully, it is the opposite. Overeating causes billions of dollars wasted on healthcare, and landfills are 95% packing material (boxes, bags, polystyrine) A hot dog takes 25 years to decompose in a landfill, but that is only because it's made of, errr... no one knows. Most food will become birdfeed or decompose within the month. on the otherhand, heart conditions and obecity lead to 180-200 billion dollars a year in hospital bills. a week in the ICU can cost a years salary. I will have mom write a article on all that, but there are ways to help. give it to the dog, the poor, take it home, put it in the fridge, put it in the water (for the fish) I throw my uneaten food into the intercoastal, where the fish love to eat it.

"giant John Holmes style servings".....Dave you crack me up....please don't ever change !!!

Extraordinary work, Dave. Bravo.

Dave, thoughtful and well written. But I have a couple of comments.

First, don't get caught up in the Poop versus Landfill paradigm. Might I suggest that you share the burrito with your co-worker. That way there is no waste. You both cut your costs and eliminate the need to argue over how best to dispose of the burrito remains. I used to be in the recycle and reuse camp but I have decided that reducing the resources that you consume is the best way (and eliminates the need to reuse and recycle).

Second, I'm not convinvced that sending NYC sludge across the nation is environmentally sound regardless of the benefit to the Texas turf. Think of all the fossil fuels that are consumed during transportation. We have a much bigger problem with our "food system". If the Texas soil is depleted in order to raise cattle to feed people in NYC, simply sending your wastes back to Texas is a zero sum game. Not only do you spend all those resources shipping shit to Texas, you use even more resources sending hamburgers back to NYC. While it sounds like a responsible "food-shit" cycle, I don't think the ends justify the means. A better alternative would be to eat foods grown in the NYC region. Here in Michigan we have some of the best agricultural land in the world. But family farmers cannot afford to farm. They make more money selling their land to yuppie's in order to build their zipper homes along the freeway. Coincidentally, we have people starving right here in the urban areas of Michigan. Most of our food comes from outside of the state and nation. In fact, the typical American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to table consuming 10 calories of fossil fuel energy (packaging/transportation) for every one calorie of food energy. Not to mention the terrible working conditions that most agricultural families must endure just so American's can eat asparagus in January. Think local food Dave, it's out there you just gotta look for it.

Chip is almost exactly right... The American Diatetic Assosiation has drafted a plan to fix this problem, Dave has brought up a much bigger problem then he will ever know... PORTION SIZES! Kudos... As you might know, my mother is an expert on this subject, she told me the basic problem lies within the portion sizes, 99% of resturants serve portions tat are too big! more than 80% of Americans are over their ideal weight, 10-15% are morbidly obese. If resturaunts served smaller portions, people would eat the right amount, and there would be no waste, problems solved. Chip, my idea was this, what if we made it illiegal for oil refineries to burn off unused fuel, instead to sell it at bargain price to other corperations? tell me what you think, I'm curious, would it at all help?

Boys -- good points about portion size and sharing, but the premise of this argument is "to eat or to trash". We all agree that its better not to have this conundrum in the first place --- smaller portions, sharing, great. But when faced with either throwing it away or eating it, as responsible PoopReporters, I feel we must advocate the pooping solution. If you want an economic argument, there are labor costs associated with carting all our unwanted food to the dump. If you want a health argument, surely it isn't healthy in the long run to breed rats and maggots with our waste. No, we must reclaim the food. Back to the earth! Poop --- for the future of humanity!

I suggest you bury everything you can't eat. That way, some plant will eat the food that you don't. Also, feeding your dog leftovers is a pretty effective thing to do.

Thanks alot Dave! Now I'm gonna be debating this all day.

even though i start alot of shit on this sometimes clever, usually gay website, i can sometimes be remotely human. i am truly sorry for you and your families loss dave.

plan for this world as if you expect to live forever; but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow. -i. gabirol

Flush your food

Slim, i'm no expert or anything, and i'm in the 6th week of biology in my crappy california school, but burying food doesn't help much. it would take lots of time to get the bacteria to break the food down into something plants can eat. being buried, it'd take longer, with the lack of air and that kind of stuff. the plants who get the nutrients from the food will probably not benefit anything an any way besides maybe looking nice and changing some CO2 into some O2... and i bet it stinks too...

you can't just bury it, but you can compost it. hasn't anyone heard of that? you can make a compost heap in your backyard (or your friend's, etc.). half-eaten burritos go in. excellent fertilizer comes out. no meat though. i guess you still have to turn that into shit and send it back to texas where it came from.

in holland, you separate your garbage. "green" garbage - most food except meat - is taken away and put into a huge compost heap by the city.

in toronto, the goal is to divert 80% of waste from the landfill, by 2006, using various recycling methods. one interesting one is an "anaerobic digestion system" that will also generate heat for downtown buildings! they figure it could be possible to stop using landfill altogether by 2010.

so it's not just a choice between landfill and poop! there are other alternatives if you look for them.

Food in garbage dumps just rots and turns into methane gas, which is one of the worst forms of greenhouse gas. This is also the gas which farm animals fart & burp out and is a major source of greenhouse gas - which is why in New Zealand (with more sheep than people) they attempted to introduce a fart tax. You should put your waste food in a worm farm, a compost heap, or eat it, as Dave suggests - provided you then use a composting toilet, of course.

This is my kind of story. Our landfill closed in 1985. In 1988, my city began to incinerate the garbage (partly for electricity), and bury the ash at the landfill. All of the city sewage is also incinerated, but this is done right at the sewage treatment plant. It to finds its way into the landfill. We have had fish kills, due to the nitrogen, potassium, phosporous, and many other minerals that don't get filtered completley out at the plant.

Regarding my personal waste, I created a giant sealed underground pit, where all of my organic waste is turned into compost. My wastewater goes through a greywater system. Toilet waste is also decomposed in the pit. The temperature of the decomposing material reaches 160+ degrees (maintained at a minimum of 130), killing any pathogens. When this material is decomposed, I let it age for one more year, then use it for gardening. (There is more to it than just that).

Now, for my little tangen. Why hasn't anyone thought of an automobile that runs on Methane gas. After all, Methane is an inexhaustible resource, as long as there is garbage, there will be Methane. Many gasses can easily be converted into oxygen. So, have a device on the car that turns the Methane into O2, when it reaches the muffler. O2 will come out of the tailpipe.

Lastly, for those who think composting poop is gross. Many cultures do just that (Some Oriental, Hunzas, even some place in the U.S.). After all, humans are just another form of an animal. But, to compost human waste, you need to know what you are doing. If it is done wrong, it can spread disease. So, don't try it unless you are farmiliar with Environmental Science, and Disease Control.
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Jammin' lo'flo's since 1977.

I went to school with a kid named Louie. He was a skinny little fart, but by the way he ate he should have weighed a ton. "You gonna eat that?" was his mantra. What we need is a few kids like Louie everywhere. They'd take care of Carolyn's excess burrito in short order. I even recall him complaining that something tasted bad as he was wolfing it down. Must of had a tape worm or someting.

I know exactly what you're talking about, Anomalous Coward. Here's what I sometimes sound like: "I hate this food" (said with a huge mouthful of the hated food)
I think the real solution here is to lower food production. Did you know the U.S. alone produces about 3 times more food than is necessary to feed the country? No wonder people say you Americans are so fat... People could be using the excess food to fuel their cars or something instead of putting it in landfills.

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...and they all lived crappily ever after!