It’s convenience that wastes our efforts to achieve a sustainable planet.

 

I’ve written about the problems with solid waste in our society and I’ve recently seen discussions about our “waste” problems.  I said “solid waste” because we are also wasting our time and efforts if we don’t recognize something:  All the strategies to confront the problem are piecemeal reactions to the symptom (the waste) and not the overall cause:  Convenience itself.

We’ve all heard about indigenous people who can live in harmony with natural processes, but population density is the enemy of sustainability.  Because of it, it just isn’t convenient to deal with our waste stream in a sustainable manner.  

You can’t have composing in the city or even in the suburbs (if your neighbors are finicky).  Other products come in convenient packaging with multiple types of plastic, most of which gets contaminated with food waste.  Convenient “pop top” tin cans leave lots of food waste inside unless one inconveniently spends a lot of time getting the food out of them.  Meat products come with cosmetic diapers and multiple layers of plastic that a day after use, stink, forcing you to get rid of them fast.  They can’t be recycled and serve almost no purpose other than removing our consciousness from the fact that we’re dealing with the inside of a formerly living animal.  It all has to go to the landfill, and it has to go there quickly.

In rural areas we can grow our own food and compost all organic matter.  If the packaging of the things we still have to buy from the grocery were to be better, (do we really need six kinds of plastic containers?  I’ve seen individually wrapped apples!) our landfill needs would minimal, and the landfills would have a better quality of waste.

Online shopping is convenient.  The multiple boxing of the products is waste.  The two-and-a-half-ton truck that delivers a package of eyedrops or a pair of shoes wastes a lot of fuel for a few ounces, sometimes, most of the ounces are packaging. 

Marvin Harris in Cannibals and Kings, The origin of cultures, wrote that the invention of agriculture lead to most individuals actually needing more hours of work per day just to feed themselves.  The fact that it may have also led to civilization as we know it because it allowed for specialization is great; but it failed to lead to a component of our communities that specializes in waste reduction and disposal. 

It just wasn’t convenient.