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Click for full-size image What do garbage and public relations have in common? Take a trip to future world and find out.
I had never really considered a career as a sanitation engineer, but suddenly the idea doesn't seem far-fetched. "Good job!" a perky female voice commends me as I spill a load of dirt over a fresh pile of trash at the bottom of a dump. Really? I think. "You have a great future in landfill management," she adds emphatically.
Maybe. But I'm not really at a landfill, only moving a little yellow dozer with a joystick at Walt Disney World's Epcot, where Waste Management Inc. has an exhibit called "Don't Waste It," and the voice is prerecorded. I could be doing nothing -- and since I've never touched a joystick before today, it's possible I am doing nothing -- and she'd be happy.
Since opening in 1982, Epcot has celebrated human achievement, particularly in the technological sphere, and projected hope for the world's future. The goals sound high-minded, though most of Epcot's offerings are no more than rides or games with the thinnest of educational veneers. For example, Epcot visitors -- or "guests," in Disney parlance -- learn how to prevent house fires by playing an interactive game sponsored by Liberty Mutual, how engineers design safe cars by screaming around a test track sponsored by General Motors, and how biotechnologists "feed a growing population" on a boat ride sponsored by Nestlé. Elsewhere, we are shown how Siemens refrigerators coated with special powders will prevent the growth of microbes in homes of the future. Might the powders lead to powder-resistant bacteria, the way our profligate use of antibacterials has given rise to bugs that resist all antibiotics? That's a possibility our Disney "cast member" doesn't address.
I wanted to see what Waste Management, the country's largest garbage company, was up to, and not only because it has such a long way to go in the public relations department. (It was rocked by an accounting scandal in the late 1990s and has paid many millions of dollars in fines for environmental violations, including burying waste illegally, spilling hazardous waste, and violating the federal Superfund law.) I was also curious about its new slogan, "Think Green," which seems the pinnacle of doublespeak. After all, the company's success -- it posted record-breaking earnings in February 2008, when this exhibit opened -- depends on a steady, if not rising, stream of waste. It stands to reason that consuming and wasting less stuff, one of the best things an individual can do for the health of the planet, is antipodal to corporate goals.
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Behold, The Lord God Bird