In the disposal chapter Leonard discusses the distribution of where our waste comes from. The most shocking fact to me was that 76% of all waste is industrial waste, as compared to 2.5% municipal solid waste (garbage). While production methods need to be changed, the obvious use and wastefulness of our society was still very evident. I thought that Leonard's discussion of the stigma of used goods in wealthy countries (such as the US), as compared to less wealthy countries was very accurate. People in this country including myself usually are not particularly keen of the idea of using something that is old. People don't like the idea of acquiring something that is old, let alone using something over and over again. Additionally it is no secret that the US produces a staggering amount of waste. The average person accounts for 4.6 pounds of waste everyday, which is up from 3.6 pounds in 1980. Just one portion of this waste is plastic bottles, where there are 150 billion single use beverage containers used every day. Something that is unbelievable when you really think about it.
Obviously there is a huge gap here between the amount of things we consume, and the actuality of what it takes to produce these goods. People in our society use far too much, but that doesn't change the fact that much of it can be recycled. The fact that the majority of waste comes from the production process makes me think that it is much more important to limit the amount that we buy new materials then I ever did before. For this reason I think it will be critical to couple my recycling project with an education portion as well, so we can get people to use less then they do right now. I think for the most part people just don't understand that buying containers everyday and recycling them is not enough(although its an improvement over just throwing them away). While I still believe I need to make every effort I can to help ensure that items that can be recycled are, I think it is equally as important to make sure people know how much it hurts the environment to buy any item at all. Another fact from the Story of Stuff was that for every amount of waste we throw out, 40 times that waste was created for it to even be produced. That being said, the first thing is to make sure we don't continue to add to the problem.
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Waste is defined by where something is, not what it is.
-Kosa Goucher-Lambert
I appreciated your discussion about the fact that recycling simply isn’t good enough. I know that I am often guilty of thinking that as long as I’m recycling, I’m doing my part. But as you said, we all need to be better educated about the manufacturing process, and how much waste is created in that process. Maybe an idea could be to not only target students on campus to recycle and reduce consumption, but also try to begin targeting business and actual manufacturers so that they can begin by making changes from the initial stages of production that would save a lot of energy and other valuable resources in the process.
ReplyDelete{this comment is on behalf of Brent)
ReplyDeleteI most appreciate Kosa's point that the only fully effective way to reduce waste is to reduce consumption. In America the trend has been to create more and more waste. In order to to reverse this there must be a fundamental change in the mentality of consumers. They must understand the ramifications of waste. At Occidental I believe Kosa's tactic of educating the population about the costs of consumption will aid in this effort. I also suggest that we approach higher levels at the school to potentially reduce the options for consumption. For example we could attempt to convince the administration that water bottles and other plastic container beverages should be phased-out. This would remove the option to create waste.
-Brent