People won’t do, en masse, what is excessively inconvenient or expensive for them.
This basic truth of environmentalism too often seems to elude notice. On one side of the political spectrum, the notion prevails that if we just educate people enough, they’ll understand how their actions hurt the environment and make changes.
From the other side comes an insistence that environmentally-minded people show full ideological purity: “Well, if you care so much, how come you don’t [insert environmental action here] yourself?”
It’s long seemed to me that these arguments ignore a major problem – life for most people is already pretty taxing, and most people are scrambling just to get by day to day.
I’ve bumped across this truth in my quest to diminish the amount of waste coming out of our house.
Waste has been in the news lately. Photos of whales, birds and turtles killed by plastic gizmos and bags shown spilling from their guts have surfaced across social media. The images have spurred campaigns to reduce plastic waste.
Meanwhile, China recently decided to drastically reduce the amount of foreign recyclables they’ll accept for processing. Previously, China handled a full 50 percent of the world’s recyclables. Such materials are only repurposed if a profit can be made, and in the absence of an economically viable market, many recycling companies are stockpiling recyclable materials or sending them to landfills despite consumers’ best efforts.
In response to problems like these, a small army of Zero-Wasters has sprung up. For instance, at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, student Samuel McMullen and his sister Lydia McMullen-Laird (who graduated in 2012) went zero waste for a year, avoiding even waste they could recycle. They then founded the nonprofit Live Zero Waste, through which some 400 others have pledged to do the same.
Recently, a Buzzfeed video made the rounds on Facebook, featuring a young woman who was able to fit an entire five years’ worth of trash into a single Mason jar.
“I used to think that the solution to environmental problems was through politicians and proactive policy decisions,” she says, “but I realized that individuals have a huge impact on the world and the climate. If we all take little steps and all make little changes, that has a big positive impact.”
It’s striking, however, that the big proselytizers for zero or very low waste lifestyles have certain characteristics in common.
They’re young. They have no kids. They live where they can easily visit farmers’ markets or supermarkets that sell bulk food. They have time to do things like bake their own bread (Samuel and Lydia) or make their own cosmetics (the Buzzfeed video star). They have the time and physical space to learn to compost food waste, or enough money to pay someone to pick it up.
The Buzzfeed star notes that one of her own enduring sources of waste is “festival bracelets” from concerts she’s attended – suggesting her level of free time and disposable income.
That kind of detail makes even left-leaning news outlet Mother Jones comment, “Here in the United States, we hear ‘zero waste’ and think sanctimonious yuppies.”
What about the rest of us?
For myself, I’m constantly noticing the things that slip by me into the trash. Mushroom boxes. Styrofoam packaging for meat. Saran wrap. Duct tape. Plastic produce bags. Aluminum foil from leftovers and chocolate bars. The plastic packaging from a tool I bought the other day. An aluminum and plastic takeout container.
I compost, try to buy sparingly, and avoid online shopping with its reams of packaging. But a lot of waste – and recycling, for that matter – still comes into my home just because it’s attached to the things I buy and use. It takes work and attention to avoid it.
Friends with children, with jobs that keep them at an office desk from 8 to 6, who work multiple jobs, have far less time and energy than me to think about reducing waste. No matter how well-meaning, they may not be able to visit supermarkets that sell in bulk or buy at physical stores instead of online.
As I’m woken by the clang of garbage trucks early in the morning, I’m reminded, too, that my own waste is a drop in the bucket compared to the businesses across the railroad tracks from me.
Businesses, too, find it difficult. They must compete to stay afloat and so resist being the only ones making choices that cost money, even when they might prefer to be environmentally sound.
When so many aspects of ordinary, day to day life are designed in ways that create major waste streams, or don’t provide incentives to reduce, reuse or recycle, it’s hard for many people to escape.
“Taking their cues from the popular media and cautious politicians, many Americans have come to believe that they are personally to blame” for environmental problems, writes Mike Tidwell in his essay “To Really Save the Planet, Stop Going Green” – “and that they must fix it, one by one, at home. And so they either do as they’re told – a little of this, a little of that – or they feel overwhelmed and do nothing.”
In Tidwell’s view – which echoes my own – until we grapple with these difficulties together, as a society, we won’t be able to make a real dent on our environmental impacts. We’ll remain a handful of disconnected recyclers and composters doing our best and feeling saintly in our own backyards.
“We must bring our battle plan up to scale,” writes Tidwell. “After years of delay and denial and green half-measures, we must legislate.”
That’s happening right now in the European Union, which is considering a ban on single-use plastic – and in the U.S. too at a smaller scale, where Seattle this July became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils. Great biodegradable alternatives to, for instance, plastic knives and forks can be made out of potatoes and other materials. But for as long as plastic’s just a tiny bit cheaper, a tiny bit stronger, and a tiny bit more abundant, people and businesses will reach for plastic.
That short-term convenience costs all of us in the long run in terms of space for landfills, the health of the oceans, and human health as chemicals from plastics leach into our drinking waters.
We could mandate composting for businesses. At Macdonald’s, for instance, like the one near me on King Street, I’ve noticed that to their credit, almost every piece of their waste except for straws and drink cup lids is compostable. They don’t, however, compost it.
We could set limits on the amount and type of packaging companies may use to ship or display their products.
Unlike Tidwell, I believe individual action and willingness to change are vital. Individuals – like the zero-wasters – can inspire and encourage others. And when a lot of people act at once, they can prompt bigger changes, such as the way the organic and local food movements have helped spur a vibrant sustainable food industry.
But the most wide-reaching solutions for the environment will in fact come from “politicians and proactive policy decisions” – the changes that we collectively and democratically agree on as a free people.
Society has to choose to support and foster environmental change as a whole, not leave it up to the few with the means and the moxie.
We can generate far less waste and still live happi ly.
But we’re going to have to find a way to be compassionate to one another, make it easier for each other, and above all, do it together.