Recycling
is one of the many details people do not often consider throughout their day. With
busy schedules that cause people to be on the constant move, tossing a bottle
into a trash receptacle seems like the easiest thing to do. However, people do
not realize that such an act can have detrimental effects on the earth.
Roderick Nash’s proposal of an “island civilization” illuminates the stature of
the pollution dilemma in the world today.
Pollution
can come in a variety of forms – land, air, water are the top three – and each
can have harmful effects on people and the environment around us. Landfills
contain a concoction of toxins, chemicals, bacteria, and other wastes that can brutally
spoil the living conditions of the land surrounding them. “Every year one
American produces over 3,285 pounds of hazardous waste” (Green Student U). With
approximately 313 million people in America, the total waste for the United
States alone would estimate 1,028,205 pounds. That is a staggering amount of pollution.
Landfills in the United States can also impact the air and water nearby; gases
taint the air while chemicals seep into the ground and sully the water (Information for Action).
Not only are the living conditions not acceptable for humans and animals, but
for flowers, trees, and grass, too. Plants cannot flourish with chemicals destroying
them and wastes blocking their paths to the surface. One of the sad facts about
landfills is that over 80% of the items can be recycled (Green Student U).
However, as stated earlier, many people are seemingly “too busy” to recycle and
therefore contribute to the problem at hand.
In
order to reduce the pollution in America and, essentially, the world itself, the
fundamental change would be to ensure that there is an increase in recycling. People
would have to: invest in items that can be reused rather then used then thrown
away; carpool, walk, or bike for transportation; cut down on smoking; and avoid
washing chemicals down pipes and drains. These simple solutions, and many
others, can significantly decrease pollution on Earth and would keep “island
civilization” out of the future.
"Encyclopedia."
Green Student U. Green Student U. Web. 22 Aug 2012.
<http://www.greenstudentu.com/encyclopedia/pollution>.
"Land
Pollution." Information for Action. Information for Action. Web. 22 Aug 2012. <http://www.informaction.org/index.php?menu=menua.txt&main=landpol_gen.txt>.
I always thought recycling had become a common practice, but I guess we still have a long way to go. There's a lot of compelling evidence here; I never realized that so much of what’s in landfills could be recycled. I wonder how much of that is just plastic garbage bags! This is definitely a cause of the ‘island civilization’ scenario because sooner or later we’ll run out of space to dump all of our waste and the world might look kind of like it did in WALL-E. In fact, that raises a good question: where did Nash expect the self-contained ‘island civilizations’ to put their waste? Maybe the engineers of the future are supposed to find more efficient ways of dealing with trash. I sure hope the environment is strong enough to survive until we figure it out!
ReplyDeleteAs far as place goes, I know you mentioned the United States as a whole, but really this is a global problem (and perhaps even more than that since NASA is trying to figure out what to do about all the ‘space junk’ floating around us). I know Europe’s recycling programs dwarf our own, mostly because they have no room to just dump all of their waste like we do. Maybe that’s what it takes to effect change, like someone suggested in class on Tuesday; when we’re on the brink of disaster and can’t possibly continue our unsustainable actions, maybe we’ll change.