Guerilla Gardening & Trash

A young woman in a green jacket with horses printed all over it stopped to ask what they were doing.

“We’re gardening,” Reynolds told her.

“Who are you gardening for?”

“For everyone and ourselves,” he said. “We’re guerrilla gardeners.”

Here is an interesting video and article in this weeks New York Times Magazine about a group of people in London who rehabilitate plots of land in urban areas through gardening. They do this without permits so they consider themselves "guerilla gardeners." They believe that by treating these areas with more care and thought a pedestrian will also treat this land better. One could also consider this an act of selflessness because it improves the natural environment that countless people inhabit. This not only has a positive physical effect on the landscape, but potentially an emotional and mental one as well. This website details these guerrilla's feet's in more depth.

Ironically, the Sunday New York Times has an article about trash problems in the city of Naples. Italy has run out of room for all the trash they accumulate and are shipping their trash to Hamburg, Germany to avoid it piling up in the middle of the streets.

Hamburg has actually reduced the amount of trash they accumulate with the use of sophisticated recycling and incinerating. Just another reminder that we can change our ways it just takes concerted effort on the part of our leaders, but also by each individual to make that next step.

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I thought both of these articles highlighted a tension that exists because of consumption. More consumption by more people equals more trash and poor treatment of one's surroundings once we run out of remote places to hide our waste. However, just as much as we consume and defile we also want to live in clean beautiful surroundings. How can we achieve a balance between disposing of our waste in a thoughtful way so that we are reminded of our need to consume less while at the same time treating our surroundings with more thought?

-johnson!