Today was trash day. I forgot until I left the house. That's when I noticed the street neatly lined with the giant brown bins issued by the city, all standing at attention waiting patiently to be emptied. I was lucky, they were all still full so I dragged mine out to join the crowd.

Where does all this trash come from? The city sent out a notice saying we could buy a second bin, if needed. What are people throwing out that they need a second bin every week? How do they get that much stuff in their houses in the first place to have it to toss? Part of the answer may be that there is a lot more trash these days than there used to be. It seems as though every single tiny little thing you buy comes packaged in at least two boxes with literature and some padding. Let's not forget junk mail which apparently is increasing exponentially each month.

I know I have way more trash each week than seems theoretically possible. I have no idea where it comes from. I don't remember bringing that much stuff home. How does it get there? Are sneaky reverse-thieves breaking into my house while I'm away and putting stuff in my house and filling up my trash baskets? I'm starting to think there's trash secretly growing somewhere in my house " in the back of a closet in the dark, like mushrooms.

Which leads me to my next question: Where can all the trash possibly be going? It's nice that a few of the things we toss out will actually disintegrate over time. But more and more our trash is filled with the innovations of mad-scientist, greedy mega-conglomerates, and will still be perfectly intact three thousand years from now, when possibly the human race will have long since nicely disintegrated. We'll all be gone but the plastic package my snack chips came in will look like new, perched on top of a mountain of plastic milk jugs.

I'm definitely not radical in my ecological opinions; you might be able to say I am a conservationist. I like to think I care, at least. I believe there is a point where we can't escape the fact that we are, ourselves, responsible for the world on which we are living. If we can just protect the planet from our own stupidity, it will still be here for future stupid generations to ruin.