The CapaCity Project started as a response to my inability to recycle plastic caps and container lids. It soon grew to include all things plastic that couldn't be recycled. At one time I was able to take this material to be turned into plastic park benches. Then the company that made the benches went out of business. It was too late anyway. The collection had grown and encompassed more than plastic. Metal jar lids, the egg cartons that my neighbors no longer needed since the chickens had become their dinner, a pile of phone books, and the wooden crates from all the clementines consumed over 8 years comprised the mountain in the basement.

The concept had shifted a bit. It was now more about how much 'trash' one frugal and anti-consumptive person generates. By making it visual, it showed how truly monumental this issue is, especially when you multiply by 6 billion consumers. Business, government, and industry compound the problem. This is one man's city of refuse, comprised of castoffs from life in the 21st Century. How much more can our small blue planet absorb?

The concept, of course, applies to all things where growth is unbounded - population, traffic, the ever-increasing assault on our senses from advertising, and the relentless gallop forward of technology. At what point does our capacity to manage change get overwhelmed? The telephone is an ideal example. Once a simple-to-use, same-everywhere-you-go item. But now, if you pick up 10 different phones, each one will require varying thought and analysis just to make a call. Even for techno-savvy people, their response to this is telling. Stress out and touch someone? Will our own mountains of trash be our undoing, or will we be torn apart by ever increasing rates of change?