Carolyn, on the other hand, ate until she was full, and left the rest. That's how she was raised. She eats until she's full.
I was shocked. What a waste of food! What a waste of resources! As a wannabee-marxist/environmentalist (meaning I capitalize and consume as much as the next capitalist and consumer, but feel guilty about it), I felt it was my duty to chastise her for her eco-unfriendly ways.
Nonsense, Carolyn rebutted. Throwing away food returns it to the land from whence it came, to decompose at the dump and re-enter the food cycle as worm food.
Pish tosh, I snapped back. Garbage sits in a landfill until the end of time. Landfills are designed to store trash, and keep it out of the eco-system. There's only one way to return food back to the food chain -- poop.
We argued. If food must be disposed of, is it better to throw it away or eat it up and poop it out?
For most normal people, the argument would end there, forever unresolved. That's
because most people don't run a web site about poop. I, however, do.
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
Americans generate four pounds of garbage per person per day -- 210 million tons per year. And most of it is buried in landfills.
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A landfill is not a dump. A dump is a big hole where trash is buried. Animals and moisture get in, organic matter decomposes, and the trash is re-entered into the environment. That's good, in the case of leftover food, but bad, in cases like lead paint and battery acid.
That's why most cities use landfills. Landfills are closed systems -- they keep the garbage in and (try to) keep the moisture out. A landfill is designed to isolate trash from groundwater, and keep it dry and out of contact with the air. In a landfill, trash doesn't decompose. It just sits there.
Carolyn and I live in New York City. Up until about a year ago, all our trash was trucked and ferried over to Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island. Which means every meal Carolyn's ever thrown out in this city is still sitting there, a little spoiled but otherwise just as she left it.
Ecologically sound? Highly dubious! By throwing away your food, dear Carolyn, you're just sticking it somewhere to clutter up our environment till the end of time.
Landfills, although more environmentally friendly than dumps, are still an example
of the folly of short-term thinking. What do you do when a landfill fills up?
What do you do when all the landfills fill up? The more we consume, the more
garbage we create, the bigger the piles get. They're not going anywhere, and every
discarded Gary Coleman-sized leftover burrito is just another piece of trash adding
to the problem.
DOWN THE SWIRLY BLACK RABBIT HOLE
Within the body, food is mostly converted into energy. What the body can't use is turned into a brown (or greenish-yellow, in the case of a hippie Mexican burrito) paste we like to call poop.
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As Toucan Sam said, let's follow our nose. Poop is pooped into the toilet. You flush, and your log (or gloop, in the case of a hippie Mexican burrito) is sent down the pipes to mix with other logs and gloops on the way to the sewage treatment center.
Poop may seem useless, but it's actually chock full of nutrients. However, you can't just spread your poop on your garden -- poop also contains all sorts of harmful bacteria. At the sewage treatment plant, the sewage is treated -- and the good poop is separated from the bad.
In the first treatment stage, the mess sits in big tanks until the scum rises to the top of the water and the solids settle (at which point the solid waste becomes a sludge known officially as "Sludge"). The scum is removed, and the water is chlorinated. Then the wastewater is pumped into tanks full of bacteria, which eat up 90% of the remaining matter. Finally, some other chemicals are added, and the water is discharged -- often back into a river to become part of the natural water cycle once more.
And the solids? The food you pooped -- what becomes of it? Well, it turns out
sludge is an excellent soil conditioner and fertilizer. After additional treatment
by more bacteria, the sludge is bottled up and sent off to the farms, to re-enter
the ecosystem as plant food. NYC sludge, for instance, travels by train to Western
Texas, where it is used to provide nutrients to revitalize depleted land.
IN CONCLUSION, DO WHAT I DOO
Carolyn and I both agree that wasting food is a sin. If you can't finish a meal, you should take it home or give it to a bum. And hippie burrito places should act responsibly and cut back on their giant John Holmes-style servings.But if you must dispose of your food, do it in the ecologically sound manner. In this PoopReporter's opinion, the evidence is incontrovertible -- it's more ecologically ethical to eat your food than throw it away. Never mind that the food will make you fat and unhealthy -- the Earth's fitness is more important than yours. Just do more exercise.
Extra food? Eat it. Force yourself. Pain is temporary, but Mother Nature is forever. Return the food to the ground, so that it can create more food. And then sleep easy, knowing that the burrito you crapped out tonight will become the hamburger you'll eat tomorrow.
-- Dave [1]
Like Dave? He's featured in The Journal of Ass Production [2]!
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