Talk about trash? Yes, let's talk about trash and the future of planet earth.

Along with global warming, all the trash piling up in the world is an extremely serious problem for humanity. And it will only get worse as we continue along the path of unrestrained consumption of all the things we think we must bring into our lives every day.

A lot of this stuff piles up in our homes, and a lot of it gets tossed into our already overflowing trash cans. If that isn’t bad enough, you step outside, and you see trash everywhere. You see it on city streets and overflowing from trash bins. You hear noisy trash trucks rumbling through the streets, and you think – if you think about it at all — that all the trash disposed of that day by you and by everyone else is being efficiently hauled to your local garbage dump never to be seen again. Out of sight, out of mind. The sun sets and then rises again, and tomorrow you and everyone else will toss out more trash, and the local trash truck will haul it away again. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and you get on with your day.

But do you ever stop to imagine how much trash the local dump can handle as our daily trash-tossing ritual goes on year after year? Do you ever stop to wonder whether all the land around us will eventually turn into one enormous garbage dump? That could happen. In the past century, as the world’s population has grown, waste production has risen tenfold. Rubbish is being generated faster than other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases.

Not a pleasant picture.

Here’s another unpleasant picture of an enormous garbage dump you may not know about. One that is not on the land but that is in the water. Today the largest garbage dump is in the Pacific Ocean. Called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it goes from the coast of California to Japan, and it’s very big, possibly twice the size of Texas. As more trash finds its way into the ocean, the Pacific and other ocean garbage dumps will only get larger, killing wildlife, affecting fishing, and littering beaches. Most of the trash is caught in an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant, constantly expanding whirlpool. What’s in this huge trash pile? Everything you can imagine from light bulbs to bottle caps, from toothbrushes to Popsicle sticks to tiny pieces of plastic. These pieces of plastic containing toxins are eaten by fish, which means that the plastic bag we threw into the trash today may wind up back on our dinner plate sometime in the future. That's an awful thought.

We as individuals have to do a better job of managing our consumption and our waste. We have to buy only what we really need so that we add fewer items to the ever-expanding, upwardly spiraling pile of trash on which our civilization so insecurely rests. And industry has to do its part, too. Those companies that manufacture plastic must produce alternatives to plastic, especially environmentally safe, reusable packaging. But until that happens, we as consumers can immediately switch from plastic to paper trash bags so that we no longer add to the accumulation of plastic waste in the world. We can also put a filter on our kitchen faucet to fill up our permanent water bottle with clean water and stop buying throwaway water bottles every day at a convenience store. And there’s a lot more that we can do once we put our minds to it.

This excerpt from my novel, EMPTY EARTH, describes what remained in a world destroyed by climate change caused by global warming. The main characters, Adam and Eva, struggling to survive, had found a car on an empty, weed-filled former expressway in what was left of the United States. They stopped on the side of the highway, got out, and walked over to a broken-down farm house.

They weren’t surprised to see that anything of value had already been scavenged. All that remained were pieces of broken furniture, bricks, and fragments of glass. Under a mangled sink they found a couple of empty water bottles and a small pan.

“We’re going to needs these,” Adam said. He also found a grimy duffle bag under the rubble, and he put the bottles and the pan in it along with the hot-wiring equipment they had with them. Then they walked back to the car. Tossing their new gear in the trunk, they got back inside and drove slowly down the road.

“All that remains of our civilization is trash,” Eva said, struck by a wave of sadness.

 Rick McManus, who lives in North Hollywood, California, wants to see the world remain a beautiful place for everyone now residing on this planet and for untold generations to come. His novel "EMPTY EARTH" is available on Amazon.com. His latest novel "ATHENA: a teenager fights the climate crisis" is also available on Amazon.com