RECENTLY we have heard of quite a few food-related scandals: poisoned milk, dyed or painted steamed buns, even poisoned salt.

A Shanghai Daily feature story (April 19) gave an impressive list of food additives for us to watch out for: colorants, preservatives, sweeteners, and color formers.

In our ideology-free society, consumer is the right word to characterize our species. As a consequence, political slogans give way to advertisements, which are more impassioned, more aggressive, and more pervasive.

While we have long forgotten the political slogans that once inspired our parents, our children will be outlived by the time-defying legacy of our consumption: the dead rivers and the soil, the mountainous rubbish heaps our cities are evolving into, and one of the greatest discoveries of our scientists: radioactivity.

But before we have time to reflect if consumers today are more sinning than sinned against, the capitalists are again congratulating us on our super consumption power, as liberating, progressive, and miraculous.

Our degree of well-being can be reliably measured by the amount and toxicity of the trash we leave behind.

One of the goods that best exemplifies our craving for technology, heightened sanitation standards, and convenience is plastic.

Recent reports of suspected poison seeping from babies' plastic milk bottles scared some parents, but how can we live without plastic, for one minute?

When a chestnut remains clad in its pristine shell, it looks very humble. When peeled and repackaged in plastic, it can be proper food for the most elegant.

The water we drink in an office flows from a plastic bottle. Although we have no idea where the water comes from, the plastic gives us a sense of security.

Plastic has even taken on symbolic meaning.

When it was reported last week that a once impoverished herdsman in the West had his first plastic (a bank credit card), it said a lot about his elevation.

Good citizenship today largely centers on two things: whether one drops the trash into a trash can, and whether one pays due respect to the motorists (by conforming to traffic rules). But there are growing uncertainties regarding where the trash will end up.

According to Tuesday's Oriental Morning Post, the once-suspended garbage incineration project in Panyu, Guangdong Province, is generating fresh concerns.

In 2009, the proposed project met with strong resistance from the locals. In the runup to the Asian Games, the project was put on hold.

Five hundred days later, the project has been revived and the local government suggested five possible locations for the facility.

Locals will again fight against it, but unless the local government knows how to export its trash out of the area, or local citizens abandon their trashy lifestyle, the project brooks no delay.

Dump on others

Exporting our trash to our neighbors seems too outrageous even to contemplate, but like many other evils, the concept can easily be rationalized, even glorified, in our globalized era.

It has already been diligently practiced by the developed countries, and developing countries seem to be on the receiving end of this trade.

In terms of value, the largest US export to China is in the category of "waste and scrap," and that is growing the fastest of any American export.

According to a 2009 report, US waste and scrap exports to China reached US$8 billion for 2008, accounting for well over 10 percent of total exports to China. Those exports grew by 916 percent between 2000 and 2008.

So we may be literally exporting our precious water, air, and soil in return for trash, and our trade partner remains very unhappy about the trade surplus.

The Middle Kingdom has also been favored as a dump for poisonous e-waste, whether originating at home or abroad.

A UN study says that by 2020, e-waste from old computers and equipment is expected to jump by 500 percent from the 2007 levels in India, and by 200 percent in South Africa and 400 percent in China.

Although it is difficult to find relevant data, we can believe that increasing amounts of nuclear waste, and the cost and difficulty of handling it, naturally make it ideal to be dumped on others.

This dirty dumping work on others works well with solid waste. But how about the pollution to air, water and soil that's largely linked to manufacturing necessary to sustain consumption?

Well here the developed countries have found the ultimate solution, thanks to the globalization, by outsourcing manufacturing capacity to developing countries.

While the developed countries are enjoying the full benefits of this manufacturing, the "growing" economies are struggling with rapid degradations in environment.

Finland is known for its paper making. As a matter of fact, the actual paper is made almost entirely outside that beautiful country.

It can be easily imagined that the expanding military industry is the only sector some Western countries prefer not to outsource to others.

Since the earth is finite in its space, this beggar-thy-neighbor game cannot continue forever. Before long, everyone will be confronted with the direct consequence - not just in the form of melting icecaps and rising sea level.

"Trash island"

The largest landfill on earth's isn't on land, but in the ocean.

It is reported that a swirling sea of plastic bags, bottles, plastic fishing nets, and other debris, known as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, is growing in the North Pacific, somewhere between California and Japan.

It is a floating junk yard of 3.4 million square kilometers, about a third the size of Europe. Some call it a "trash island" but it is much complicated than a mass.

It is probably more like a similar island I saw last year in a picture of the Three Gorges dam, showing a layer of garbage nearly two feet thick and about half a million square feet in front of the dam.

Most of the garbage ends up in the ocean after being washed away to the sea through rivers and sewers. Then ocean currents collect it for thousands of miles and drop it into the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. A similar patch is growing in the Atlantic.

We humans cannot keep those patches out of sight for long.

If we hope to leave our children more than an oversized trash heap, it is time responsible people woke up to the insanity of reckless growth.