Recyclables are killing culture.
The job description of an archaeologist, according to Wikipedia, is to “study past human societies primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data which they have left behind.”
That basically means one era’s trash is another era’s treasure. So, when we recycle, we steal a cultural education away from our children’s children’s children.
“Material culture” is trash. Those broken pots didn’t get there on purpose. People did not walk around burying pots. Somebody threw them away, and because someone threw them away, kids can dream of growing up to get a get doctoral degree so they are able to go out with toothbrushes and dig for years to find a piece of broken pottery that somebody used to eat soup out of 1,000 years ago.
I would hate to be the person who kills that kid’s dream 1,000 years from now, so I’m going to throw away a soup can. If we keep recycling and composting like we have been, one day archaeologists will run out of things to find.
This will hit the museum industry pretty hard, since archaeologists are one of their main suppliers. And without any museums, elementary schools will only have two places to send kids on field trips – the zoo and the fire station.
Growing up, I went to museums to look at broken pottery, old clothing and those rocks they used before pillows were invented. I don’t want my descendants to go look at piles of nutrient-rich compost that used to be my bag of potato chips.
When Frito Lay made their Sun Chip bags 100 percent compostable, I thought I was going to have to resort to putting the empty bag into a time capsule before throwing it away. Lucky for me and my descendants, a bunch of potato-chip snackers put up a big enough fuss to get the bags recalled. Way to go America – I trust you had the cultural education of your descendants in mind when you posted all those whiny videos on YouTube.
Give your descendants a chance. Don’t erase a period of human history by recycling or composting. You may think you’re saving the planet, but you’re really just killing our culture.
My garbage is my legacy.
