The ultimate spiritual pilgrimage for our times? A trip to a waste management site | Eleanor Margolis
toIke all the best things in life, this story begins with an argument around the boxes. It is Muslim, I can do better in recycling. I can try to read a lot about how all our plastic waste In the end it ends At the landfill in the poorest parts of Southeast Asia. But I am also lazy and well known to the cognitive dissonance that I might have been crying over the scene of death in Bambi while I comfort myself by getting rid of gazelle stones.
My partner, Leo, is the overall opposite: diligent and principled. This is why she finally lost me for her failure to put a plastic yogurt in recycling. I went to the defense, referring to half -bound reports about Megadumbs in the Philippines and the inevitable ventilation. I avenged our seizure on an educational tour Recycling and recycling center in Southuark.
There is nothing like fermented, sweet, and juice. When we hit us, about 100 meters from the center, I became more convinced that we will be the only people in this tour. Minutes later, we were in a conference hall full of waste management lovers. There were about 20 of us in total, including a blue ponytail, an elegant gray hair in an elegant green, and an American. This is the cross -off cross section of Binthusiasts. Ages ranged from mid -twenties to the early 1970s. Silence fell over the room when he misunderstood a man – perhaps misunderstood, “What loves everyone in London?” Ice sweeping question – I declare it happy because he has cancer. All the strength of it. Another moment of tension came when, during the introductory slides, we learned that in the UK, the glass is recycled to the isolation, not More glass. In this, one man (perhaps the most passionate in the group) enters, describing it as a “tragedy”.
After a video of health and safety that was tested on it (yes, this tour of the waste management facility also includes an exam), where we put in place personal protection equipment and we went to the material restoration facility. This is somewhat similar to the intervention within the MC Escher printing, where the garbage is transferred by the carrier belts in every direction. This – the first station for each one element is placed in a blue box by the Soutoark residents – modest. Workers move in stabbing gloves, through our waste, with the help of machines that work that they work, and sometimes from artificial intelligence. It focused on the individual, visible, secondary elements in the endless current; Tuna box, loved leprechaun game, and some papers music pages. I started thinking about how each of these things interacted before being thrown, and soon you started to feel dizzy. Yes, the tourist guide told us about the strangest thing that appeared in this place: a live cat. Don’t worry, they survived, and they called him lucky.
While she stood there in a solid hat, I felt disgusted and innovative, I realized that, I realized that everyone It needs to see this. Once again when Hajj was more than one thing in the West, people were traveling to great spaces to think about their total and wrong. Today, a visit to mechanical garbage cathedral may achieve a similar purpose. It is very easy to imagine that the things we throw stop exist. But to face thousands on thousands of forgotten things more than a sad day and an unpleasant smell: it is a reminder that we are part of a very huge thing.
Did I have a religious experience in a recycling center? Have you seen the face of God in a lifelong -tearing bag? No, no. But I learned that people are trying to recycle dirty diapers (who are you and why? Although I am still aware of the limits of plastic recycling, we can at least give it an opportunity to fight.
There is something that hopes to face a group of people who want to be on a waste management tour. People who think deeply may not be in the place where our neglected nonsense ends in the majority, but there is a more way than you think.
The next station (a friend suggested that we save this one for honeymoon): a wastewater treatment plant.
