Strap on your crampons and grab your ice picks - we’ve got a mountain to climb! That’s right, I just decided that Mount Sustainability is made of ice. Just go with it.
Up first, we have the Zero Waste front. Of all seven fronts, I would say that this one is the most well-traversed. That’s because waste is fundamentally inefficient and can provide immediate financial benefits to those who can reduce it. I mean, who wants to buy food, water, electrons or stuff and not get what he or she paid for? It doesn’t even matter if you care about the environment – it just makes cents not to waste (okay, okay, even I admit that is a bad, overused pun).
That said, despite being inefficient, waste has permeated our lives. At a high level, I see a few reasons for that. One, wasting things is convenient, and our society has certainly decided to prize convenience. Why carry around a reusable fork when your favorite fast-food restaurant will just give you a plastic one for free?
Second, it is at times easy to justify the need for waste. Consider the medical field. We don’t want certain medical supplies to be reusable, because that could create a risk of infection transmission. That concern is certainly justified and I agree with it, but we should still recognize that it generates waste, which is unfortunate.
Third, certain sectors have a vested interest in the creation of waste. For example, the plastics industry has created an organization called the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance that works to oppose bans and fees that local governments might impose on plastic bags. Just how big is the market they are trying to protect? Well, according to the Earth Policy Institute, approximately 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed annually around the world (roughly 2 million per minute).
So the next time you go to a grocery store, please please PLEASE remember to grab the reusable bags you keep in the trunk of your car!
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