What Rubbish?

We have a garbage chute in our apartment complex. There is a sign on the chute asking people to bring their garbage down to the room if the chute is full. The garbage room is logically directly below the chute accessed through the garage or the street. Every weekend trash piles up outside the chute. Why? Do people not know where the garbage room is? Can they not infer where it is by the location of the chute and where the garbage bins are placed, biweekly, for the pick up? Or, are they just lazy? If so, what thought process makes it okay for them to leave their trash in fornt of the chute? Perhaps not the most elegant entrance into thinking about our koan, but I promise to make this deeper than it appears.

My first few questions relate to the person's awareness. Perhaps they are not aware of the location of the garbage room. The sign clearly states that there is one, and I will assume, for the purpose of my argument, that the person has taken the time to at least glance over said sign. So, let us be generous and say that the person does not know where the garbage room is. Why would someone make the choice to leave their garbage there instead of investigating where the room might be? The sign also states that there is a fine for leaving ones garbage outside the chute. Doesn't it also follow then that it is in the person's best interest to discover where the garbage room is and remove the looming threat of monetary consequences for their actions? Where is the drive to seek out this information?

But what if they know where the room is and they decide to leave their trash anyway? Thus the ethics of the matter. What makes it okay for the person to leave their trash? Why is it not their problem? Why are they exempt from this request to put their trash in the trash room? As a member of our apartment community, I do not look away. I do not leave my trash sitting in front of the chute. I do not assume that my trash is someone else's problem to deal with. I won't even put my trash in the chute if I see that it's filling up. What makes me different? Why do I make these choices while others make the opposite?

Finally, let's talk about the trash, by which I mean the contents of those plastic bags and twist ties. I am extremely fortunate to live in a place that allows me to be truly aware of what I'm throwing away. To be aware of what is going in a landfill and what is not. I can put all of my biodegradable waste - food scraps, soiled paper, used tissues/paper towels, etc. - in a compostable bag and the city will pay someone to come, pick up that waste and take it to a facility to be composted! The urban, community farm that I volunteer at uses that compost. That's awesome. Moving on to recycling. If it has a recycling symbol on it, I can recycle it. Numbers don't matter here. That means that every item that I put into my trash I know it can't be reused or recycled. And I can honestly say that I take out the trash about every three or four weeks, but I take the compost/recycling out at least once, more often twice, a week.

Why do I have this privilege? The technology is there. The infrastructure can be created. I'm sure it would create more jobs. Albeit dirty ones. So, why is it that most people don't have to think about the waste that they are producing and where it's going? In a culture that consumes so much, how often do we really think about what's left over?