So in the end, what happens to all the stuff we buy anyway? At this rate of consumption, it can't fit into our houses even though the average house size is doubled in this county since the 1970s. It all goes out in the garbage. And that brings us to disposal.

This is the part of the material economy we all know the most because we have to haul the junk out to the curb by ourselves. Each of us in the United States makes four and a half pounds of garbage a day. That's twice what we each made 30 years ago. All of this garbage, either gets dumped in a landfill which is just a big hole in the ground, or if you’re really unlucky, first it's burned in an incinerator and then dumped in a landfill. Either way, they both pollute the air, land, water and, don't forget, change the climate. 

Incineration is really bad. Remember those toxics back in the production stage? Well burning the garbage releases the toxics up into the air. Even worse, it makes new super toxics, like dioxin. Dioxin is the most toxic man-made substance known to science and incinerators are the number one source of dioxin. That means that we could stop the number one source of the most toxic man-made substance known just by stopping burning the trash. We could stop it today. Now some companies don't want to deal with building landfills and incinerators here. So they just export the disposal too. 

What about recycling? Does recycling help? Yes, recycling helps. Recycling reduces the garbage at this end and it reduces the pressure to mine and harvest new stuff at this end. Yes, yes, yes, we should all recycle. But recycling is not enough. Recycling will never be enough, for a couple of reasons. 

First, the waste coming out of our houses is just the tip of the iceberg. For every one garbage can of waste you put out on the curb, 70 garbage cans of waste were made upstream just to make the junk in that one garbage can you put out on the curb. So even if we could recycle 100 percent of the waste coming out of our households, it doesn’t get to the core of the problems. 

Also, much of the garbage can't be recycled. Either because it contains too many toxics, or it's designed not to be recyclable in the first place. Like those juice packs, with their layers of metal and paper and plastic all smashed together, you can never separate those for true recycling.  

So you see, it is a system in crisis. All along the way we are bumping up against limits. From changing climate to declining happiness, it's just not working. But the good thing about such an all-pervasive problem is that there are so many points of intervention. There are people working here on saving forests and here on clean protection. People working on labor rights and fair trades, and conscious consuming, and blocking landfills and incinerators, and very importantly, on taking back our government so that it really is by the people and for the people. All of this work is critically important. But things are really gonna start moving when we see the connections, when we see the big picture. When people along this system get united, we can reclaim and transform this linear system into something new, a system that doesn't waste resources or people.  

Because what we really need to chuck is that old-school throw-away mindset. There's a new-school of thinking on this stuff and it's based on sustainability and equality, green chemistry, zero waste, close loop production, renewable energy, local living economies. It's already happening. Now some say it's unrealistic, idealistic, that it can’t happen. But I say the ones who are unrealistic are those who want to continue with the old path. That's dreaming.

Remember that old way didn't just happen. It's not like gravity that we’ve just gotta live with. People created it. And we’re people too. So let's create something too.