I have a very hard time understanding why people waste. I mean we all could do a better job of minimizing the amount of trash we create, but most people are just so very mindless of the waste they create. All of the grocery stores in this city sell reusable shopping bags - all of them. Yet, every time I get groceries, there are so many people that say "plastic please". Ok, it might be hard to remember the bags when you first get them. But if it is a priority to you, you WILL remember. If it is something you care about, you WILL remember! So why don't people care about reducing the amount of those disgusting plastic bags that are flying all around the city making this place seem trashy? Honestly, there is a grocery store every couple of blocks, so if you get to the store and realize that you have forgotten your bags, is it really that hard to just go back home and get them? I mean, I understand that taking the trip back home is also wasteful, but if you make it MORE inconvenient to forget your bags than it is to remember you bags, you will be so much less likely to forget them.
Oh, and disposable drinking containers - plastic water bottles and paper coffee cups! How horrible are these objects??? What, you are too cheap to buy a $3 travel mug to put your $5 dollar Starbucks in? And bottled water - ridiculous! The water in this city is so clean, it is actually cleaner than bottled water - so that is NOT an excuse. Oh, ok, so it is convenient. How lazy are we as a society that we need to be able to purchase a portable container of water at absolutely every public place we may frequent? If you are really in that bad of need of constant access to drinking water, just bring a reusable bottle along!
Do NOT even get me started on people who just flat our refuse to recycle! We get recycle containers that are emptied by the city - CURBSIDE! How much more convenient can it get? But it is unbelievable how often people will use the excuse "I just don't ever think about it.". Seriously? That big yellow bin that the city provides you with doesn't jog your memory??? And then there are people that say "Why would I recycle? They don't give you any incentive.". Ok, well reducing the amount of landfill used to store your discarded aluminum cans isn't incentive enough? How selfish have we become? Do people ever do things because they are the right thing to do?
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I have to admit I am guilty of some of those crimes. I recycle because my mom collects all the plastic and stuff and turns it in for the money. I wish I could find the article that went behind the scenes to a recycling center and it was atrocious. I thought I was doing a good thing until I read that. They do seem to have aluminum down though~!
ReplyDeleteI just recently bought some reusable bags from Costco, so hopefully I am with you there.
And I just recently decided that disposable water bottles, etc., are such a waste. Of money, time, energy, resources. How hard is to wash a reusable container out?
We are all guilty of creating waste. It can be really hard to over come habits that we never thought of as "bad". It is definately difficult because of the convenience we are all used to.
ReplyDeletePrime Example: Some of us are used to purchasing bags of frozen veggies to cook with. Think about everything that goes in to that: the vegetable is farmed (most likely not in a sustainable way), then it is harvested and transported to a processing plant, then it has to be processed to create those perfect individual pieces that are all ready for you to cook, then it has to be frozen - and kept frozen (this requires lots of energy), and transported to a retailer (and kept frozen there too), then you purchase it and throw away the packaging because it is not even recyclable. The alternative: purchasing locally grown vegetables fresh and taking them home in a reusable bag, then composting the scraps.