One thing that has always made me equally curious and revolted is other people's garbage! There is so much to learn from it. That would be the area of my study. I would take the biggest producers of garbage and pair them against the smallest producers of garbage, and find out why there is such a discrepancy between the two. Apparently this is already a thing: garbology ! I've always been curious about where trash goes! It must go somewhere. How fortunate we are that we can simply forget about it and live in blissful ignorance. This is a particularly pressing question, especially after Michael Moore called Toronto's garbage out for contributing to the Flint, Michigan crisis.
Anyway, I'm a weirdo and I would study garbage.
Haha, it is a unique thing to research but one that should definitely not be discredited! This research could potentially help understand waste management (i.e. in Toronto). For example, if you studied the garbage people put out on a day to day basis, you could see what recyclable items come up most in a person's garbage. Knowing this, you could decipher a trend as to what recyclable items are most tossed into the garbage bin. This info could be used to create an awareness campaign that educates people on items that people generally think are garbage when they are actually recyclable. Super interesting stuff!
ReplyDeleteI would also study garbage (think about that for a second)!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there is so much to learn from our trash. For example, I believe that if someone went through my garbage over the period of a month, they’d know more intimate details about my lifestyle and habits than my girlfriend (that’s a joke… haha). It’s a little frightening to be honest, thinking about how much we can derive of one’s life from the stuff they throw away.
Just think of how much we could learn about a society from the stuff they throw away.
#powertogarbs
I think this is an interesting artifact to study! I think for me, the interest isn't necessarily in the quantity of garbage, but rather the quality of garbage (that's an odd notion). I agree with Karl in that garbage does reveal a lot about our lives, whether we realize it or not. Food for thought, what if we extend this to digital garbage? The amount of information that is available - in files we put in the trash, words we delete, browser histories we erase - is an untapped source of information. Or is it? When we empty a trash can on our computers, does it really just disappear? Or is there a digital landfill, somewhere in the intangible world of clouds?
ReplyDeleteI could see people binge-watching the newest season of Garbology on Netflix! hahah
ReplyDelete