This guest post comes from Karen Hawes of Trash Trip. Karen is travelling North America to find out more about landfills, waste streams and trash.

The first time I toured a landfill, it made me suddenly wonder to myself, “What am I doing here?” The surroundings were alien and the smells were far from favorable.  I was experiencing a moment of doubt and I had only recently begun my journey! There was no turning back, I reminded myself, and I pressed ahead with the interview that was underway; I looked back at my hesitation with a newly found re-assertion of commitment to my work. This was early June, 2009, and I was at the beginning of my trip from Alaska to Argentina – exploring the ways people view and handle trash. I had dubbed it “Trash Trip,” which is where you’ll find me on the internet, at www.trashtrip.com.

The roads that lead me to do this trip, figuratively speaking, weren’t obvious ones in some respects, but in one respect it was singularly clear; I felt compelled to look behind the curtain, so I could see what was happening behind the scenes of waste management. I didn’t want it to be limited to the United States, however. This was a cultural inquiry as well. I wanted to know how people viewed and handled their trash, inside and outside the US borders. Ultimately, I want to find out what works, and what doesn’t, as well as why. What more logical a route could one choose, than from the top of my home continent, to the bottom of the next?

Before this trip began, however, it was a long period of contemplation and debate, nearly three years worth, frequently punctuated with “Aha!” moments and excited anticipation.  By the spring of 2009, I told friends, “I am so OVER talking about it!”  After two years of talking about it, I was finally doing it. It was originally slated for 2008 but I delayed it to 2009. The extra time was beneficial in many ways except one – it was one more year of talking about it versus doing it. It made me wonder if I was all talk and no action. Pushing north on the Dalton Highway, after thousands of miles of driving through remote areas of northern North America, I was increasingly relieved, with each mile, to be nearing my initial destination – Deadhorse. 

To date, I have well over a dozen interviews with various individuals and professionals involved in waste management. Their experiences and insights have been enlightening to me, as I seek to understand. In preparation for this trip, I debated doing massive amounts of research; instead I chose to keep things simple and let the information develop, organically so to speak, as I move along my route south. This has resulted in some amazingly “serendipitous” moments – which only underscore my feeling that this was all meant to happen this way.

For example, what are the odds that I should happen to pick up my first-ever hitchhiker, in Dawson City, Yukon, only to discover that he is from France and works at a landfill operation in Normandy? Oh, and I’m fluent in French to boot. You just can’t plan these things to happen! Add to that, the unplanned extra night I stayed in Dawson Creek which resulted in me having the Cache Creek landfill revealed to me; only to discover that I’ll be able to pass through that town, on the same evening when they were having a community meeting about the future of their (enormous) landfill. Had I left Dawson Creek on schedule, I would have missed that golden opportunity; I might not have otherwise known to search for Cache Creek had I not stayed the extra night. A brief interview with one of the opponents to the Cache Creek landfill prompted me to perform a small survey in Vancouver, which supported his argument that most people don’t know where their trash goes. In all, my experiences, so far, have been more than fruitful – as I let things grow “organically.”

When asked if I am an environmentalist, I find myself replying with, “Actually, I’m an engineer.” As I see it, we’re all environmentalists, to some extent, and I don’t see myself as strictly “an environmentalist”; we all want clean air, water, and land, which is to say we all want a clean environment.  How we go about it varies, however. I am not here to point an accusatory finger at anyone. I am doing my best at keeping my mind open and ears listening; while I explore the ways waste is handled. The people who are directly handling the waste are usually doing a job, not unlike any other, as they work within the guidelines and budgets that are outlined for them. If there is something wrong with what is in place, then we must all act together in finding a better solution. This is what I hope to find and share with everyone – options for better solutions.