Lasting Footprints

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

Part 5: Reduce Your Waste 

A couple of weeks back, Paul Lawrence saw an air conditioner sitting on a sidewalk in Queens, New York.  He decided to grab it since the thing had been left for trash.  As Lawrence placed the unit in his car, borrowed from an aunt, a city official from the Department of Sanitation approached him, slapped a $2,000 fine on him, and impounded the car.  His 73-year-old aunt was also slapped with a $2,000 fine for allowing him to use the vehicle for such a heinous crime.

One of my childhood heroes actually LIVES in garbage.

This is normally the part where I fight back an aneurysm over civilization-dooming government control but not today.  We’re past the halfway post of a series on social justice issues, and this week is about how much waste we create, whether or not it matters, and what should be done about it.  

Apparently trash on a city sidewalk is city property, and recycling is a major source of revenueso we’ll leave Mr. Lawrence to the court battle he no doubt has coming.  Call me naive, but I never realized how massive the business of garbage is in our country.  Government controls are just the tip of a trashy heap of problems connected to our waste. 

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We live in a disposable world.  According to Julie Clawson–whose book Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of our Daily Choices inspired this series–the average American creates a few pounds of trash everyday.  She continues by saying: 

“…for every 100 pounds of product we acquire, 3,200 pounds of waste were created in the  manufacturing process.  This waste adds up…” 

I agree that waste adds up (check out the video below), but the impact of that waste is being debated by many different voices. 

The first argument against waste is usually the claim that we are filling landfills and running out of space.  Then I read articles with statistics saying we have way too much space to even come close to filling it all.  

Before long recycling enters the debate.  I always thought recycling was a fairly positive thing and had no idea how many problems exist worldwide as a result of saving plastics, metals, and more for reuse.  I never thought of recycling as an expensive government venture that costs states millions of dollars.  The UK found this out not long ago as entire warehouses were filled with discarded products that were supposed to be used as raw materials for future production.  That production isn’t always there so governments have to pay to store garbage.  But read a few more articles and you’ll hear how recycling creates jobs while saving the planet!    

Finally, I’ve heard that the real problem of disposable things is the pollution it creates in our rivers and oceans while harmful toxins are released into the air.  So I’m hearing a lot, but what is true?