I throw very little in the trash.
posted by nate on March 27, 2003
I put out bags and bags of glossy pressboard packaging, soymilk containers (that somehow get recycled with their waxy, aluminum & plastic-infested packages), newsprint & junkmail (evil! Should be illegal!), uncrushed tin (guilt!), bottles, aluminum cans, and of course: plastic. Every time I do this, I recollect long ago coming across the theory that Al Gore quickly threw together the recycling program to bypass the actual problem of excess packaging & consumption. One in a long list of my half-remembered, half-believed conspiracy theories.
At the time, the media & populace were obsessed with greenhouse warming & ecological studies warning that within 20 years we'd push earth's biosystem over the brink of no return. The EPA was imbued with the power of the people's fear and were able to pass many laws and regulations to reduce pollution and direct industry towards a greener tomorrow. Of course, in the states, there wasn't necessarily the cry to consume less, to buy in bulk, to reduce packaging, or even to make corporations responsible for the processing of their post-consumer packaging (as many European nations were doing at the time). Most of the energy was put towards industry creating packaging in a greener sort of way as opposed to less packaging.
With mass consumption being an integral part of the unquestionable, god-given right of living the American way, it was nigh on sacrilege to recommend citizens consume less.
Instead, corporations began to hone the expensive but very effective advertising campaigns that assure you of their ecologically benign operations, glamorizing whatever miniscule community effort they were tossing $1000 to that week.
I remember being in middle school when the big recycling phase hit. We students, much like being taught the mindless cry œJust Say No,” were turned into eco-fascists, posting signs and scolding parents with guilt-inducing propaganda that turned recycling into the Large Concern. This worked so well over the next ten years that you stopped hearing about greenhouse warming and the rampant destruction of earth by the ever-spreading American way. Politicians have been slowly, quietly eradicating environmental protection laws to clear the path for business to go on as usual. And now with Bush in office, we've seen a slew of vaguely worded trailers & bills that are slowly pulling the teeth from the EPA's power.
In response, intelligent people with environ-mental concerns have adopted recycling as a catholic-confession-like purging of their consumption sins, arranging everything into bags that are carried away weekly to god-knows-where.
I'm certainly not trying to imply that recycling is useless or bad. It's definitely a damn good idea. The problem is that there is too much packaging, and a majority of it causes more pollution to recycle it than it does to produce it. This is what really gets me. The factories that strip Coca-Cola cartons of dyes and reduce the toothpaste boxes to pulp are often pumping out equal if not more pollution than it took to digest the trees, press the board and apply the ink. This is causing some strange irony to take place: the good intention of reducing harm to the environment in avoiding further harvesting of trees for new packaging is pumping tree-killing toxins into the air. The eco-band-aid on the green human's conscience is exposed for the false fix it is. The real problem is that the packaging is being produced at all.
As a city-dweller, these points are taken with a mound of salt on my own conscience. It's very difficult to live as low-impact as I'd like while immersed in the belly of the beast. I am certainly guilty of enjoying my little existence scraping mold off the cream of capitalism. With this in mind, I am sure of the fact that every little effort everyone makes to consume less and buy more things without packaging (as well as recycle vs. œthrow-away”) makes a huge difference overall.
In 1994, the European Union employed a Directive on Packaging that required member states to introduce systems for the return and/or collection of used packaging. By 1996, they were to recover 50% - 60% and recycle 25% - 45% of all packaging produced. Furthermore, the directive œprovides that member states shall take measures for to prevent the formation of packaging waste, which may include national programmes and may encourage the reuse of packaging.” Recent targets for 2006 require the overall recovery and recycling to be 60% - 75% and 55% - 70% respectively.
When manufacturers were suddenly required to pay a percentage of the projected cost of either recycling or landfilling the packaging for their goods, suddenly toothpaste was displayed without a box, standing upright in display stands. Extensive research was put towards reducing packaging to an absolute minimum to save costs. The only thing that forces a capitalistic system to change is what it's based on: money. And let's not fool ourselves: the entire planet has become a giant capitalistic machine. There's no doubt the economic situation takes precedence over the planetary ecosystem: decisions are made to keep our economy healthy, and the state of the very earth we exist on, the source of all life as we know it, is secondary. Picture petulant, red-faced American manufacturers crying about trade difficulties with European nations because of their ecological restrictions on packaging.
When earth belches from a toxic breath of another year's pollution, containing 1.6 billion tons of carbon emissions, America certainly doesn't jump to aid her.
We say we'll get to that within the next 15 years, maybe. And ten years down the line, when we've made a minimal decrease in pollutants produced due to corporation stranglehold on legislation, it's deemed unrealistic to meet that ancient deadline. Suddenly the ecological requirement changes and/or the deadline gets moved back five years. Meanwhile, earth sucks in another billion tons of our sludge (double the emissions of the Œ60s), coughs, and exhales a meager puff of purified air. Humans retreat to the nearest Starbucks to refuel, dive back in the SUV & speed towards more consumption, pausing only to toss their temporary caffeine receptacle in the nearest depository. Onward! Buy! Buy!
The US is by far the largest per capita consumer of world resources. Instead of moving towards being a world model of sustainable existence, we find ourselves focused on controlling oil resources so we don't have to change our way of life. And unfortunately, this trend extends to all facets of our consumerism, not just packaging. It's a sick & real possibility that we won't change until we're forced to. Once resources reach such a point of depletion that it becomes incredibly expensive to find raw material for paper, plastic, gas, & metal, you can be assured manufacturers will patss on the expense: soon a box of crackers will cost $7, a gallon of oil $10, and a crappy car $50,000.
Only then will we begin to consider other ways of modern living on a massive scale. And at that point, the expenses will be the ultimate merger of economic and ecological consequence.
