What a Waste

December 4, 2008

A few members of the group went to a tree house today.  It was really awesome.  It was not like a little kid tree house.  It was an actual tree house.  It was 3 stories high and super awesome.  The tree house was made out of all recycled materials and was built to fit the tree perfectly.  I really like the idea of making things out of recycled materials.  My family lives in an area where we are not able to get our recyclable waste picked up and so we just throw everything out.  After this week, I feel like we should really change this.  I often wonder about my own wastefulness in these situations.  I wonder about how much I have used in this life.  How much have I thrown away?  How much of that could have been used again?  I wonder where all of that waste ended up.  It could have made its way to India.  We know that India buys garbage from the United States so my garbage from home could have made it to India without me even knowing it. 

In the US we are so driven to buy more than we need.  Why do we have this drive?  We are told that these things will make us happy.  But do they actually make us any happy?  I really don’t think that our things make us any happier.  A lot of the things that we buy end up in the trash.  Over the last 3 months I have been living off 5 shirts and 2 pair of pants.  If someone had told me that I could live off so little for 3 months I never would have believed them.  I have been living simply in India and it surprises me so much.  I guess that I don’t really think about it anymore.  I wonder how many of these lifestyle changes will come home with me.  I guess that I will just have to wait and see what happens when I get back.