At times like this I find myself meditating upon what the world will be like in 500 years or so. It’s really looking like it won’t be pretty and it makes me feel sad for my descendants, and yours, that we’re probably bequeathing them a post-apocalyptic nightmare world. Maybe it will rain all the time. Then it couldn’t be worse.
I have a hard time getting rid of anything useful, such as containers with lids. I don’t really believe that recycling is going to save us, since I discovered, at a grocery store where I used to work, that our recycling was being shipped to China. “They’re stockpiling it for the post-apocalyptic future,” I thought, and, “It’s really fucked up that our refuse is worth money in other countries, and yet we lock our dumpsters for fear some homeless person right here might prolong their miserable existence in the back of the train that is America by getting some of this day-old bread.” So I keep jars instead of recycling, and I use them as go cups, and overnight oats incubators, and storage of herbs, buttons, beads or whatever. And I still have a stockpile of sturdy containers with tight-fitting lids. When I look at them, I think that someday an item like that will be worth two unlabeled cans of (possibly human) food, or maybe even more! The future person who finds it will be so stoked when they return to their hut and barricade themselves in for the night.
So every so often, I put a sturdy container with a lid into the trash, for the future garbage miners. Lately, I’ve been including other stuff I have around like matches, needles, newspaper and a note explaining what went wrong: we listened to idiots. And an apology, of course. It makes me feel a little bit better. I don’t recommend that everyone do it, though. We’re throwing away lots of useful stuff and our great-great grandchildren will have no problem finding things to help them survive in our landfills. So hakuna matata, my friends.