Family Outings To The Hazardous Waste Site
August 8, 2008
Sitting in an idling car on a hot summer day with a whining toddler and screaming baby was not how I expected to spend my Saturday. We were on our way to a family outing and decided to make a “quick” stop at the area Hazardous Waste drop-off since it happened to be on our way. Yet as we sat in the line of cars that wrapped around the block and crawled along at an aggravatingly slow pace, I wondered more than once if the “safe and proper” disposal of chemicals was really worth the effort. Did I mention the baby was screaming?
You see we had a jug of old gasoline we needed to get rid of. Having drained it from the lawn mower after a long cold winter (the stabilizer having not sustained it through the season), we had a volatile hazardous chemical on our hands and needed to dispose of it. When I checked with our city’s municipal office I was told that the nearby hazardous waste dump had closed down a few years ago. The next closest one, servicing four counties, was an hour away in an area I hardly ever had a reason to visit. And it was only open on Saturday mornings. So the gas sat in my garage. For a long time.
I thought a few times about just getting rid of it the easy way – dumping it down the drain, hiding it in the garbage. I knew that this was what most people did having heard others brag about how they evaded the hassle of making it out to the hazardous waste site. They didn’t care that it was illegal, dangerous, and seriously harmful to the environment – it made their life easy. But I couldn’t justify poisoning the river, tainting the groundwater, and endangering the sanitary workers (not to mention breaking the law). So I got to sit sweltering in my car all Saturday morning awaiting my turn to properly dispose of a few cups of gasoline. With a screaming baby.
But it made me think. Our society just isn’t geared towards sustainable environmentally friendly living. The hassle I faced to avoid direct pollution only represents a part of the problem though. Sure it’s annoying that the hazardous waste drop-off was so far away and had such limited hours (maybe more people would responsibly dispose of things if it was more convenient), but I had to consider that perhaps responsible living should start before it gets to the point that we need to dispose of hazardous chemicals. If my lawn care practices led to this need, perhaps I should think though what exactly I am doing with my lawn.
Like any good suburbanite I take care of my lawn (okay, so don’t do a very good job at it as attested by the armies of invading dandelions, but at least I give it a vague attempt). I have the gas powered lawn mower and I start getting nervous about what the neighbors will think once the grass gets a centimeter or two too high. I feel the social pressure to make my yard look a certain way despite what harm it does to the environment. Living just a few blocks uphill from the river (and having young children) I have reason enough not to dump chemicals on my lawn to help it look good. But all my neighbors do. I watched my neighbor across the street fertilize his yard five times this season. His lawn looks immaculate. Mine’s the one with the dandelions.
But this compulsion to create nice looking chemical lawns (cut with gas guzzling lawn mowers) generally trumps any desire to be environmentally friendly. Some of us might bother to dispose of the old gasoline responsibly, but it is rare for us to rethink what we are doing to the environment by having the standard lawn in the first place. Instead of working with the natural ecosystem we are fighting to conform it to our unnatural preconceptions of what we think it should be. We call what we do “caring for our lawn,” but often our actions are closer to abuse than care. We introduce foreign plants, we strip the soil of nutrients, and we allow vast amounts of run-off (generally laced with chemicals) from our flat, hard lawns. We dominate the land instead of lovingly care for it.
Like I said, we aren’t geared towards environmentally responsible living. Our convenience and our cultural mores all too often stand in the way. Some of those hurdles even seem insurmountable (like the fact that I get fined by the city if I don’t keep my lawn looking a certain way). But as I sat in the car with the screaming baby inching my way to the drop-off site, I had to consider the ultimate cost of those ingrained habits and expectations. And begin to think though my options.
Julie Clawson has spent the last few years helping plant an emerging church in the Chicago suburbs, but has recently re-established her roots in Austin, Tx. She is passionate about social justice, emerging Christianity, gender equality, and really good Tex-Mex food. Julie is currently working on a book about everyday justice issues. She blogs at julieclawson.com.
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[…] for the self promotion part - I have a piece up on the blog today called Family Outings to the Hazardous Waste Site. (come on, you know you want to know). […]
That is some serious dedication! Way back when, like 25 years ago, my dad would change the oil in our car and then pour the old oil along the fence line to kill the grass so we wouldn’t have to trim it. Not near any water source at all, but our dog did run along that fence line a lot. Oh how the times have changed. Good for you for making the effort…I’m in debate with myself as to whether I would have gone to the trouble you did, or not….no conclusion just yet!
Thanks for your post Julie.
I recently cleaned up the basement, to try to make a little overflow space for homeschooling, and wound up with a box of hazardous materials (cleaning supplies, cans of pesticide inherited from previous house occupants, flea killer from that miserable episode last year). Not having a lot of time, and wanting to just be rid of the stuff, I started to follow the lame instructions some municipalities suggest: wrapping items in newspaper, putting them in the trash can, and hoping for the best.
In my mind, I was rationalizing it by thinking about all the environmental credits I had surely built up over the years, and wanting them to cover my pending misdeed. But in the end, I unpacked them, boxed them, and will wait for our county’s semi-annual “household hazardous waste” collection days to get rid of them. I feel a lot better, although it’s a minor inconvenience.
And we’re working harder and harder not to buy such hazardous stuff in the first place….
“Our society just isn’t geared towards sustainable environmentally friendly living” says it all. For most Americans, trying to live more sustainably simply isn’t easy. In Huntsville, AL, where my family and I are residing temporarily, if a bus runs anywhere near one’s neighborhood, then it only comes on an hourly schedule. Riding a bike on the city’s streets is dangerous, forcing cyclists to use sidewalks and parking lots. The city’s recycling truck doesn’t serve our apartment build, so we if want to reduce our family’s potential volume of solid waste then we have to haul our recycleables to a receiving center miles away. None of this is convenient. Still, we must do what we feel the Spirit is leading us to do, which includes raising holy cain in the process.
Stale gas should be put in the tank of a computer controlled car. If over a gallon fill the tank with plus or hi test. Use it don’t waste it!!
[…] There are fewer, but much cleaner and safer, landfills now than there used to be (although in Atlanta they tend to be concentrated in the poor neighborhoods surrounding our church), and modern “sanitary” landfills are not nearly the healthy threat that other environmental dangers are. Even pretty high rates of recycling don’t diminish the waste stream into landfills that much, and they don’t remove the most dangerous materials (like pesticides, cleaning solutions, batteries, etc.). Household hazardous waste disposal isn’t solved by most recycling programs, and requires its own solutions (see Julie Clawson’s experience here). […]