By Bryan Walsh
Monday, Sep. 22, 2008
Dave Chameides shows some of his collection of six months’ worth of trash in the basement of his home in Los Angeles on July 1

七月一日Dave Chameides像我們展示了在他洛杉磯家中地下室裡蒐藏了六個月的垃圾。


David Chameides is not your average American. For one thing, the TV cameraman owns two Emmy awards — how many do you have? But more importantly, while the average American throws out around 1,700 lbs. of trash annually, for the past year Chameides has thrown out absolutely nothing. A deep green by nature — he also runs a website called Sustainable Dave — beginning in December Chameides decides he would keep all the garbage he created, at home and on the road, in his house. ”We have the concept of throwing something away, but in reality, we’re just tossing it over our shoulder and forgetting about it,” says Chameides. ”It wouldn’t be so funny if it was really just in your backyard.” (Hear Chameides talk about his trash habits on this week’s Greencast.)

David Chameides並非一般的美國人，因為一件事情，這位電視攝影師贏得了兩座艾美獎－而你有幾座呢?還有一件更重要的事，在一般美國人每年丟掉了約1,700磅的垃圾的時候，Chameides在過去這一年裡完全沒有丟掉任何東西。經由自然界而來的環保，他也架設一個網站叫做撐得住的Dave－十二月初Chameides決定要把他製造出來的所有垃圾保留下來，不管是在家或是在外製造的垃圾他都要保存在家中。Chameides說：「我們有把東西丟掉的觀念，但實際上，我們只是把它拋過我們的肩膀然後遺忘它。而這件事如果是發生在你家後院就不會是那麼有趣了。」（Chameides的垃圾習慣見於本周的Greencast。）

Essentially, that’s what Chameides has been doing. All of his non-recyclable trash — including organic waste like food — is stacked neatly in the basement of his Los Angeles house. He uses a tin box to hold bags of waste paper, and cans of garbage to hold the rest. For organic waste, he put in a worm composter that breaks down leftover food. Beyond that, he didn’t create a master plan for his year of no trash. ”I didn’t really think this through — which is probably for the best,” says Chameides. His wife and kids are exempted from the challenge, but not from the neighbors’ scoffs. ”My wife’s friends do make fun of me.”

事實上，Chameides是這樣做的，把所有無法回收的垃圾（包含食物之類的有機廢棄物）整齊的堆放在他洛杉磯家中的地下室裡。他用一個錫罐來放裝有廢水的袋子，而放垃圾的罐子來裝其他的。而對於有機廢料，他放進了一個蠕蟲堆肥器，那可以分解廚餘。此外，對於這無垃圾的一年他並沒有設計什麼特殊的計畫。Chameides說：「我完全沒有想過哪種方法會是最好的。」他的老婆跟小孩可以免除這項挑戰但無法免除鄰居的嘲笑。「我太太的朋友帶給我很多的樂趣。」

Not only does Chameides carefully pack away any waste he creates at home, he also lugs back trash he may have produced outside the home. Sometimes far outside: On a recent vacation to Mexico with his wife, Chameides dutifully tagged and bagged all the things he would have thrown out, and brought them back with him to the U.S. When he encountered security officials at the airport in Mexico, they were understandably confused. ”The woman in the security line opened up my bag and saw all the trash,” says Chameides. ”She said, ’Que esto?’ [What is this?] I told her, ’Basura’ — garbage. They just laughed and zipped up the bag.”

Chameides不只是小心的蒐藏他在家中製造的所有廢棄物，他也把他在外面製造的垃圾帶回家。有時候是在很遠的地方：像他最近和他的老婆才去墨西哥度假，Chameides盡責的把他所有要丟掉的東西標上標籤綑綁裝好帶回美國。當他在墨西哥機場碰到安檢官員，他們的疑惑是可以理解的。Chameides說：「在安檢線上的女士打開我的袋子然後看到全都是垃圾，她說：『這是什麼？』我告訴她：『Basura』意指垃圾。她們就只是笑然後把袋子闔上。」

It didn’t take long for Chameides to figure out that the best way to reduce the amount of trash he wasn’t throwing away was to simply cut back on the amount of stuff he consumed in the first place. Given that his nickname is Sustainable Dave, that wasn’t too hard. ”I’m a non-consumer to begin with,” says Chameides. ”After a month or two I became aware of just how little I was consuming.” Through about eight months, Chameides reckons he’s kept a little more than 30 lbs. of trash — most of which dates back to the first couple months of the year, before he got the hang of not taking out the trash. The average American, by contrast, would have passed 1,000 lbs by now. (You can keep track of the trash that Chameides is not throwing out on his blog.) ”It turned out that it’s not that hard,” he says. ”I’m a pretty normal guy — I just keep my garbage in my basement.”

我和Chameides沒有交談很久到能夠理解他要減少他丟棄的垃圾量，最好的方法就只是要在一開始縮減他消耗的量就行了。他給自己取了一個綽號是撐得住的Dave，這沒有那麼難的。Chameides說：「我先從無消耗開始，然後在一個月或兩個月之後我開始注意的是我消耗的東西能夠有多少。」經過了大約八個月，Chameides估計他把垃圾量控制在30磅以下，大部分的垃圾都是在他抓到能不把垃圾帶出去的竅門之前那幾個月內製造出來的。一般的美國人在對照之下，如今可能超過1,000磅的垃圾量。（你可以在Chameides的部落格上繼續追蹤他那些沒有丟棄的垃圾。）他說：「結果要減少垃圾是沒有那麼難的，我是非常平凡的人－我只是把我的垃圾留在我的地下室而已。」

It’s easy to mock Chameides’s earnest habits, but his quest does highlight an environmental threat that rarely gets attention. Most Americans have now come to believe that littering on the street is wrong, but as Chameides says, just because you throw something out in a proper trashcan doesn’t mean it simply disappears. Though America’s landfills are in no danger of filling up any time soon, taking out the trash is increasingly costly, with major cities like New York now having to truck their garbage hundreds of miles to reach an open dumping space. That means energy and carbon emissions. Chameides decided to begin his year of no trash after he visited his community’s landfill. ”It’s nearly 40 miles away, and they have 13,000 tons of trash coming in every day,” he says. ”It’s going to close in seven years, and then they’ll have to ship the trash all the way to Arizona.”

要嘲笑Chameides認真的習慣是很簡單的，但他的認真為了如何對待環境注入了一道強光而且也漸漸受到注目了。大部分的美國人漸漸相信在路上亂丟垃圾是錯的了，但就像Chameides說的，你把垃圾丟在垃圾桶內並不代表它就這樣消失了。即使美國的垃圾掩埋場現在暫時還沒有飽和的危險，但要把垃圾帶出去也是漸漸地愈來愈貴了。在主要城市像是紐約要用卡車運送垃圾到幾百英哩之外的開放空間去傾倒垃圾。這代表著能源跟碳排放物。Chameides在他去參觀他們社區垃圾掩埋場之後決定要開始他無垃圾的一年。他說：「垃圾掩埋場在將近40英哩遠的地方，而且每天會增加一萬三千噸的垃圾量，垃圾掩埋場在七年內會關閉，然後他們就必須要把垃圾們運送到亞利桑那州。」

Government and industry can play their part in reducing the trash stream by cutting back on unnecessary waste — especially packaging, which makes up a surprising amount of our garbage. That’s a symptom of the sort of culture we’ve become, one that’s disposable, that runs on unthinking convenience. Chameides shows that what we really need to do is simply slow down and think about the waste we’re creating, and the easy ways to reduce it, before we end up knee deep in our own garbage. ”People ask me, ’Why are you doing this?’” he says. ”It’s because I want to know more about what my waste footprint is. I don’t want to be part of the problem, but part of the solution.” That’s a sentiment that even average Americans should be able to agree with.

政府跟工業應該做好他們自己的部分，像是可以藉由減少不必要的廢棄物來減少他們的垃圾量－特別是包裝，包裝造成了驚人的垃圾量。那是我們未來文化會變成什麼樣子的徵兆，用過一次就可以丟的，想都不用想的方便。Chameides表示我們真正需要做的是慢下來且思考我們製造的廢棄物，在我們的膝蓋被垃圾淹沒之前能用什麼簡單的方法減少他們。他說：「別人問我：『你為什麼要做這個？』因為我想要對於我丟棄的東西知道的更多，我不想成為問題的一部份但卻想成為解決問題的一部份。」這是一個即使是一般美國人們都應該能夠同意的一個觀念。


Source:TIME

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完成了好開心

呵

嶼霧想要一步一步的

慢慢的增進自己的英文

而看文章就是嶼霧的選擇之一

但卻又不想只是看過而已

所以就產生了中文

呵

雖然現在還很生嫩

有很多文法什麼的都還沒搞清楚

特別是文章句子流暢度

不過

嶼霧有在努力了

會加油的

呵

開心




如果有地方需要修改的

也希望大家能告訴嶼霧唷

這樣子才會進步嘛

呵


謝謝



＜GesUndHeit＞