The green life

I was taking out the trash last night, when I saw a can lying on the lawn. It's not enough that I have to take care of my own mess, but then I have to deal with stuff carelessly thrown about the property? With all of the talk about living green these days, I would have thought that there would be more effort to preserve the environment.
With the availability of recycling here in town, Sandra and I produce very little in the way of garbage. The only thing we really throw out most is kitty litter. I don't know if there is an environmentally friendly way to dispose of that. If we had the ability to compost, we could eliminate even further waste. Coffee grounds and filters apparently compost down to some of the best soil.
I think my ideal situation would be where waste output would be less than five percent of what is brought into the home. That would mean some changes in the way we do things. For starters, we would need a home that is built to be as energy efficient as possible.
That isn't so much of a challenge today as you might think. It's all about knowing your lifestyle, and how to get the most bang for your buck. Further more, an energy efficient home does not have to look any different from any other. Construction methods must change, not the style. The house of the future will not look so different from the home of today. The appearance means little, it's the structure and planning that matters.
I think, where the environment is concerned, we need to look to the past to find the solutions for the future.
Why do we waste so many of the planet's resources when some of the best stuff is sitting right in front of us? It seems to me that we should be mining our landfill sites. It takes decades for a simple piece of paper to decompose in the dump. With just a little effort, that paper could be recycled and still more trees saved. There are enough cans in our trash to keep us supplied with metal for ages.
It costs so much less to recycle as well. In terms of aluminum, recycling used metal uses only twenty-five percent of the energy required to process raw bauxite ore. It seems to me that, just in economic terms, we should start using what we already have to hand much more effectively.
Wouldn't it be ironic though, to see bulldozers digging up what we have wasted for so long?