What if #2

This post is an invitation to you to think about the word in the middle of life: IF (L-IF-E). Each week the Rivera Runs Through It blog will present a different "What If...?" question for you to explore. Some will be serious, some will be silly, some might be political, religious or historical.

You can either write a response of your own, or just tune in to see what everyone else has to say about it. At the bottom of this post will be a place for you to link up your own post about the question, so feel free to share. If you have arrived at this post and the inlinkz tool is closed, or you don't have a blog, then please leave your response (or link) in the comment section below using DISQUS.

***If you have a What IF? question you would like to submit as a possible future prompt, please do so in the Rivera Runs Through It Community What If discussion.***

Happy pondering to everyone...

What IF #2:

What if you had to KEEP all of your trash?

Thanks to our respective sanitation departments, most of us get to bundle up all of our trash, toss it on the curb, in a dumpster, or down a shoot and never, ever worry about it ever again. As a native Staten Islander, born in the seventies and child of eighties and nineties, I think it is safe to say that I had a little more exposure to trash than the average citizen. You see, I live less than one mile from the Fresh Kills Landfill (now closed, thankfully) which was, at one time, the primary resting space of New York City's trash and once even laid claim to the title of "largest landfill on Earth."

Trash builds up quickly. It smells. It's messy. It attracts all types of animals. It doesn't always break down as quickly as we would like...

So what if the nice men and women in the sanitation trucks never came? (I happened to be visiting Naples, Italy on my honeymoon in the midst of a sanitation strike, so some readers may have a real life experience with this to refer back to while writing this.)What if there was no landfill? What if society decided the only way to fairly deal with trash was to make each citizen responsible for their own? How long would it take before you were overcome with trash?

For readers without a blog of their own, I'd love to see your response here in the comments section. If you have a blog, use the in linkz tool below to write your post and link it up!