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Kids Speaking Up: You Are What You Throw Away
When was the last time you carried your trash around for a week?
As part of our chapter of learning about waste (including everything from MSW to hazardous waste to the Love Canal disaster), Mr. Gleason (the aforementioned teacher) decided that he would give us all a big black trash bag, with the instructions that we must put all odorless waste we produce into that bag, and take that bag everywhere we go.
“At least you’re getting this assignment now and not during prom week,” he said jokingly.
Despite the seeming unfairness of this unique project, though, it turned out to have the intended, powerful effect (on me, at least); for the past week, I have slowly changed my resource-using habits as I noticed how often I throw things away.
The United States currently produces 33 percent of the world’s solid waste (12 billion metric tons per year). Granted, 98.5 percent of this is from mining wastes, wastes from oil/natural gas production, agricultural wastes and industrial wastes, so the “trash” we throw away only makes up 1.5 percent of our total waste as a country.
But within that 1.5 percent is the shocking Environmental Protection Agency estimate that each person in the United States throws away an average of 1600 pounds per year (multiply that by the 3 million people who live in the United States, and it’s a pretty intimidating number).
Where does all of this waste go? A major theme of the “waste” chapter was this: There is no such thing as throwing something away. At this point, nearly all of our municipal solid waste (not to be confused with hazardous waste) is either incinerated or stored in a landfill.
There are two opposite ways to view waste (and a variety of stances in between). One way to see waste is as a necessary byproduct of economic growth; this is a high waste approach that cares little about curbing how much we waste. On the other side is a low waste view in which trash is seen as having the potential to create new products — in other words, trash is seen as treasure.
Perhaps the popular-yet-thematically slightly frightening animation Wall•E makes a prescient point about the amount we waste; it’s not sustainable. I am not suggesting that we will need to board a spaceship to escape our trashed earth, but at the same time I assert that it’s important to be aware of how much we waste and how, again, nothing can ever really be thrown away.
After spending a week carrying around our trash, we weighed it and made a pile of trash bags on one side of the classroom. It’s interesting to see how much just 108 people created.
Interestingly, and a bit daunting. While not all of my classmates will walk away from this with a new perspective about waste, I certainly did. It is increasingly clear to me that the only responsible way of living is to waste as little as possible and support industries that waste immensely, as little as possible, because no matter where we decide to store the waste, whether we burn our waste or bury it or throw it in the ocean or ship it to Nevada, or ship it overseas or have it produced in a developing country so that it isn’t on our land, it all comes back eventually, in one form or another.
The more than 60 percent increase in our personal waste since 1962 cannot be a trend of increase that is continued into the future; the time for change, even in something as unattractive as our garbage, truly is now.
Isabelle D’Arcy is a senior at Dos Pueblos High School.
Comments
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» on 01.29.09 @ 05:54 AM
That teacher deserves a round of applause!
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» on 01.29.09 @ 11:32 AM
The term “sustainable” is best defined as 100% not bad. Imagine we figure out how to actually make our way of living an enhancement to the world we are in.
Great job by Mr. Gleason in making his subject personal, hands on, and global simultaneously.
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» on 01.29.09 @ 12:27 PM
Great article, Isabelle!
I’m proud of you and your class and Mr. Gleason!
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» on 01.29.09 @ 10:10 PM
And so does Isabelle! Talking “trash” has never been so treasureable.
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» on 01.30.09 @ 06:34 PM
I can do better. I can do anything better than you. Oh, yes I can.
Enter Wopat’s room, lunch time, Twins are there as usual. A new sign says:
DOORS MUST REMAIN CLOSE
AT ALL TIMES WHEN UNOCCUPIED
PLEASE LOCK DOORS WHEN YOU LEAVE.
The door is wide open.
Isa: Hey Mr. D…!
Mr. D. oneTeacher: How you doing kid? I see you still have that bag from your Science class. What are you doing with that? Gleason made you take that all the way to prom or reneged on the deal like Love Canal – Good Faith v. Consideration?
Isa: What do you mean?
Mr. D. oneTeacher: Never mind because lawyers do not even know about peppercorn deals and Hooker Chemical and applying Social Contracts vs. Private Contracts. Just concentrate in memorizing the formal definition of Limits in Calc. You’ll skip out of Law school primed for the EPA. So, tell me why do you still have that bag?
Isa: There’s a lady who claims there’s a treasure in this bag so the whole class is looking for it.
Mr. D. oneTeacher: Never mind her. Just look forward to Annie. I went to school with that girl in the original film you know. She still had red hair back at Cleveland High. She was in Mr. Schofield’s second period while I was in his fifth period Algebra. If we were in the same period, I would’ve wailed out all the songs with her.
Isa: I love Annie. Which one is your favorite song?
Mr. D. oneTeacher: It’s the Hard-Knock Life, the true version.
Isa: What do you mean?
Mr. D. oneTeacher: Without thinking about Love Canals in your bag of odorless trash you have there, simply the Jay Z version:
It’s the hard knock life for us
(Isa sings with Mr. D. oneTeacher)
Instead of treated we get tricked
Instead of kisses we get kicked
It’s the hard knock life
Isa: So, are you going to watch it?
Mr. D. oneTeacher: I am pretty busy most of the time that even your parents can not argue about. I just work. I think the PTA is already having a hard time understanding that.
Isa: Okay.
Mr. D. oneTeacher: Good for you now you gotta scoot cause I just heard the bell.
...bell rings
SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU KNOW MATH, KIDS WILL PICK UP TRASH FOR NO REASON. WAY TO GO D’ARCY.
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