International Garbage

If you had told me 106 days ago that I'd be on the Korean Daily Papers website and in an Israeli Magazine called Globes, I would have laughed in your face. But there it is. The Korean Daily actually happened while I was back with my Dad and provided a much welcomed bit of odd reality amidst the insanity. A friend who knows a Korean student had him translate it for me. I'm assuming that the Korean read a bit more eloquently than the English does.

"There would be no one who never thought about how serious the problem of pollution is. However, There'd not be many people who realize how much we actually contaminate environment in our everyday life.

A man in Los Angeles is doing a one year test to find out.

Dave Chameides had a thought that he won't inherit the world with piles of trash to their two daughters. He wondered how much trash one person makes in one year and if there is a way to take care of trash without contaminating environment as possible. Finally, he decided to do a test which is collecting all of his trash he makes for one year in his own basement. As a new year's resolution, Dave announced that he's going to do this test for one year from janurary 1, 2008 on his blog 'SustainableDave' on December 31.

Dave trys not to make trash by recycling over and over, but it's not possilbe to recycle everything. He separate them by two. Decayable things goes to the worm composter and non-decayable things goes to his basement. His family produces only 2 pounds trash per person a day which is less than a half of average amount of daily trash per person in america, 4.5 pounds. He's giving children lectures on the importance of environment as a volunteer.

Dave's blog became well known to many people through Interviews with major media such as ABC News. Many people who concern about environment are getting help from his blog which contains alot of data on environment and his thoughts and problems he faced while doing the test. It's simply a shock watching the real time meter showing fast increasing number of worldwide plastic bags consumed this year.

As for this one, i knew about it as they sent a reporter and photographer to the house. I'll send the translation when I get the hard copy in the mail as the type on this is just too small for anyone to read.

Enjoy.

Dave