Our world is disposable, or at least most of us think so.

A dangerous combination of extremely low overseas manufacturing costs and our own quest for more comfort and ease has caused us to become a throw away nation.

An old friend said that she and her husband don’t actually buy new ink cartridges for their home computer printer. They just buy a new printer.

That logic shocked me.

Why would you throw away a perfectly good printer?

Easy, she said.

It’s almost cheaper to do so and for a few dollars more you get a brand, spanking new printer.

A new printer, she said, cost her $70. A full set of ink cartridges was nearly $60.

So once every 10 to 12 months, she tossed out the old printer and picked up a new one.

The problem with that logic is that in a few years time, this woman has created a great big pile of old printers that must be disposed of somewhere.

And she’s not alone. Americans have tons of “stuff” — as the late comedian George Carlin referred to in a routine.

Cruising the garage sales early on a Saturday morning reveals great wisdom is in the saying: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Think about it, some amazingly “unique” items are available on any given Saturday morning in driveways and front yard all across the country:

4Velvises (that’s my name for the amazing artwork depicting the late Elvis Presley on velvet) are always popular.

4Trucker crooner Red Sovine’s 1980 “Teddy Bear” compilation album on 8-track tape cartridge.

4A partially chewed up G.I. Joe doll from the late 1970s. (G.I. Joe was tough, but he was never intended to have to fend off the family pooch).

4A vintage Pac Man lunch box, with only a few dents.

While some of you may read those and think, “What a bunch of junk,” others are thinking to yourselves, “Dang, I haven’t heard a Red Sovine song since 1983.”

And while a good bit of that “garbage” is saved by transferring its ownership from one lucky soul to another for a few quarters here and a dollar bill there, much of our “stuff” winds up in landfills.

Our newsroom sought to illustrate just how much garbage an average Natchez family produces each year.

After a quick trip to the store, the newsroom staff rolled up its sleeves and began “filling” — and I use that term loosely because most of the bags were bits of paper or cardboard we’d saved up and a lot of air — some 250 garbage bags.

The amount amazed everyone in our building as the newsroom prepared for the photo shoot. Bags of faux trash filled up our conference room and then the hallway. In fact it took two trips with our cargo van just to get them to the location of the photo illustration shoot.

Statistically, those 250-plus bags represent the volume of trash an average Natchez household produces in a year.

Doing the math, that’s approximately 170 pounds per month or a little over one ton — 2,000 pounds — a year.

When you consider the impact for the whole community, the numbers get staggering — millions of pounds of garbage each year.

And it’s not just items that wouldn’t sell at the garage sale, either.

With no city or county wide recycling program, massive amounts of “stuff” is being buried that doesn’t have to be.

Yes, we live in a disposable world, but unfortunately, we can’t just ball up the earth and start over from scratch.

We’ve got to start protecting it, one can, one bottle and one Velvis at a time.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.