What about garbage?

Tuesday morning and the revving, squealing, slapping, banging sounds of the weekly purging of the neighborhood can be heard. Living in the city, as I do, we have three large receptacles for disposing of our various waste materials. One bin is for the yard clippings, one for recyclable items and one for the "garbage". I am pleased that the city composts the yard clippings and recycles what it can. What about the rest of it?

As I look down the street at the bins set out by my neighbors I am aware that I am not alone in having only a minimum of stuff in my recycle bin, not really enough to put it out each week. Well I take that back, on the occasion that I have purchased some new item, that I just couldn't live without, I will have cardboard packaging to dispose of. This week was one of those weeks, after purchasing an assembly required bookshelf in a large box with even more cardboard inside to secure and protect the wood pieces, I had an overflowing recycle bin. The yard waste bin I sometimes fill to the top when I do a lot of tree trimming. It is the garbage bin that I see overflowing from most homes.

I'm thinking of  "Road Warriors" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome". Are the landfills just big storage facilities that we will look to as a valuable resource at some future time? What would happen if the city stopped collecting what we have deemed unworthy of our space? Would our consumer dependent economic system come to an abrupt halt? Would capitalism come to a grinding halt if we no longer had the ability to throw things into a convenient bin and have it hauled away each week out of our sight and mind? I know I would become much more careful about what I purchased. Things would have to last a lot longer to make them of any value. Technological advancements would not be so readily adapted by the average citizen when all our homes look like a scene from "Hoarders". 

I do recall the garbage collectors strike in New York when garbage was piling up in the streets and the citizenry was making a BIG stink! Will our garbage be our downfall? History books will read "United States fell from superpower status when the garbage trucks stopped running!"