This is a simpler world. The grass is green and the flowers smell great. It seems as if nothing can go wrong. But this seems like a distant reality as we learn about a clean Earth in our history class. The bell rings and I pick up my plastic pencil, my binder made of plastic, and guess what, my “paper” which is synthetically made because we used up all of our trees many years ago. These things that we hear about, the “great leap forward” in history, don't really sound like they're such a great leap for the world. Things seemed to be much cleaner back then, and that's why I hate history class. I don't like learning about the world that I could have lived in. Back then there were uprisings that occurred and opposed how we treat our world. The government was slowly starting to change our society, and they were starting to notice. I wished the government would have listened. I walk into my house and see my mother there, taking out the garbage. Garbage. That is what most of our time is focused to now, and I ask her,

“ Why do we always have so much garbage now? I learned today that long ago we didn't have half as much trash as we do now.”

She replied with, “ Well honey, it’s just how it is, we just do it.”

But this is not how things should go. Why do we have to abide by what is expected of us? I became more and more involved with what was happening around me, I started to study what those activists were saying about our world, and what was happening. I had these images burnt into my mind of a better place, where our government wasn't solely focused on what we were throwing away.  Whenever I would go outside I would imagine the beautiful trees and grasses that would blow in the wind. It was now summer and I was sitting outside, waiting for the garbagemen to come by. There they go again. They're on repeat. Again and again. All that they do is pick up the gigantic heaps of garbage, and take them away, to where though? Anger, rushed all throughout my body. I  trying to find a way to fix this, but how? This anger filled me up even more as they kept coming in, repeatedly taking it away. Their routes were very precise, every hour on the hour they would come by, fill up their trucks, and scurry off to wherever this trash was dumped. The trucks are an ugly yellow color, but are stained brown by the dirty fluids that run down the side of it. We call them the all consumers, because they are sent to take in all of the garbage that we produce. In the next hour I get my coat and hide in the bushes in front of my house.

As the machines go up and down the street picking up cans, I get ready to pounce. The car comes by and swiftly I jump on the back of the truck; my feet almost gave out from under me when I landed on some mystery liquid. It wasn't a very long drive to the trash center; I was the last house on the route. Even though I couldn't see where I was going I could tell that we were getting close to the plant because the stench hit me like a thousand pounds. I saw the fields that were there. These were the things that I had only heard about. Fields, miles and miles of fields of trash, filled with paper, cardboard and the food that we discard. The people that work in these fields are the poorest of the poor, they are at the bottom of the totem pole. The huge gates in front of the factory open up, and everywhere around are mounds of the things that have ruined this world. I heard people walk by and quickly I hide behind one of the stacks. They pass and I come out of our hiding and then go into the large packing building. I think back to what those activists would have wanted in our society. Garbage is not something we need to focus on as a society. It never should have been like this. As I look down at my feet, I see it, as I look up, I see it, it surrounds me everywhere like the confusion that I have towards it. I start to question myself, and everything, how can we cause this? I approach the container as I ponder my questions. I open the door and that was when the odor hit me like a brick wall. The smell of rotting waste and food overwhelmed me. I look through the haze made by the garbage and I faintly make out the machines. The machines. The mechanical arms, without effort or emotion were repetitive with their jobs, over and over, again and again. They don't know what they were doing, and I wasn't very sure that people knew what they were doing either. I couldn't come to grips with what we have made. Too lazy to sift our own garbage so we make machines to do it for us. Rage fills me from head to toe. What has this once good, reliable government become? All of this time I was shielded from it, but now it was right in front of me, the truth, and an ugly one at that.