I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. I know I did. I went down to Boston to visit my son at school, and spent the night with my sister before we get together again this week for Thanksgiving.
I stopped for gas on the way out of Boston, on Boylston Street, right outside of Fenway Park. I took this photo while I was pumping my gas. The image of plants of questionable health surrounded by an island of plastic bottles was pretty disturbing. Particularly because some trash cans were readily available just to the left of the pump. Add to that the gasoline price chart hovering over it all - reminding us of the ugly side of fossil fuels, and the use of oil in the manufacturing of plastic. (In fact a study out of Sweden suggest that there is a strong link between the use of oil to manufacture plastic and global warming - everything is interconnected.)
I think we all felt a little overwhelmed last week when we discussed the floating island of trash in the Pacific. There was this sense of impotence; what could we, as individuals do about a problem so vast and so distant? This little mess made me realize - more that ever - that we truly can make a difference through small, individual actions. After taking the picture, I disposed of the trash in the container. On the drive home, I stopped along I89 to pick up some trash someone had thoughtlessly tossed out of their car. These are small actions all of us can do, to make our immediate environment a little nice, a little cleaner, and a little more beautiful.
Keep this in mind the next time you see a scrap of paper, or a wrapper of some kind lying on the ground somewhere around our beautiful campus. Don't take the beauty that surround us for granted. Be a part in maintaining the beauty of your immediate surroundings.
This action may not seem as dramatic as cleaning up the Pacific Ocean. But it will have an immediate, noticeable impact on our little community and environment. And who knows - if you spread the word, perhaps a new movement will be born.
9 comments:
How ironic? Very.
Trash is perhaps one of the sole reasons our prices are so high for fuel.
I kinda like this photo.
It says: Get a clue, America.
For the last decade or two there has been an interest and push in recycleable fuels such as french fry grease to run your car and even studies to create that mess of garbage into fuels (nothing has come of that yet). All innovative.
With gas prices like these, doesn't this photo say it all? "Look elsewhere for our fuels. Hint... hint... garbage is a start." "Find a new source of fuel." Prices and environmental costs may not be worth it. We have enough waste: Do something about it.
Becca
Traditional pencils ftw! Plastic is everywhere - even in our pens and pencils. Shortly after reading the blog post, Erica got up to sharpen her pencil. Having watched her sharpen said pencil every day for the past 8 years (yeah...that long) I offered her a mechanical one (the plastic clicky kind that's kind of like a pencil-pen hybrid). She turned, gave me a strange look, mumbled something incoherent about plastics and said "As if!"
This, of course, made me think, so I said to myself "Self, that's a good idea!". Think about how many pencils you "lose" (they literally fell out of your bag, you drop them, threw them, etc.) A quick sweep of the quad would give you enough pens and pencils to last your entire high school career.
But really, don't throw them on the ground. Don't even throw them out. Refill them with the little lead containers.
Don't throw out your pencils!
JB
Some times I cringe when people talk about recycling. This is based on a childhood memory of a “recycling center” that was across the street. Basically it was a scam. They would charge people to recycle their stuff, but instead they disposed of it in several unsavory ways. I have this vivid memory of them trying to crush a mountain of milk jugs with a bulldozer, Every time they crushed them the pile would pop right back up. I think they ended up digging a huge trench and pushing all the stuff in and burying it. They burned a bunch of stuff as well. Eventually they decided to give up and shut the business down. The thing is, all those people thought they were doing the right thing but in reality they were contributing to the mess just as much as every one else.
Despite this cynicism I have started to reduce my “footprint” by buying local eggs from Mr. Deffner. He offers a 10% discount if you bring the cartons back. If I could buy all my food stuffs locally it would go a long way to helping the envioment.
cac
Trash is bad Mmkay!
I can remember a time when I would just throw my empty gatorade bottle on the ground around campus knowing Ms. Rich would probably pick it up on her daily cleaning tour of the campus, but its articles and images like these that have changed my mind about what I've done in the past. Everyone should take the time to pick some of the trash we walk by everyday and either put it in a trash or recycling bin, it doesn't take that much effort.
Inever know what tosay about these kind ofthings. I'de like tosay that it makes me really mad. Mad about how the environment is being treated or mad at myself for not taking moreaction againstwhat does'nt happen with the environment, bu I really can't. I guess a better way of describing how I feel issheltered from the reality of it all. How can I say that I am genuinly upset about the way that the environment isbeing treated when, even asI write, Iamcompletely surronded by plastic. Plastic that doesn't necessarilyneed to be plastic but is because it's more convenient. Because it's less expensive than glass. Becauseit doesn't rip like paper. Because it'sno asheavy as metal. Ican think of pleanty of reasons to use plastic, but only one really good one not to- the environment, but I don't even fully understand why. Sure, I've seen all the pictures, and I've heard all the stories but can I say I really understand when I continue to do what I know is and will continue to have a negative effect on the environment? What does make me mad is when people who don't understand are convinced they do and don't want to be told otherwise because admitting they don't care as much as they should about the environment would look bad. I guess other than doing my best to be aware of what I throw away rather than recycle and reuse, the best thing I could do for the evironment is to spread the word to the best of my ability. Try to convince people that, despite what we may believe (though there is facts everwhere to disprove their overly obtamistic beliefs) we do not have a hold on what is hapening to our environment and the battle against our own destructive habits is far from over.
~erika
As a consumer nation we buy cheap plastic things from China. We purchase overly packaged food items, miscellaneous trinkets, and things we don't even register as plasticky waste.
This weekend I lost my wallet and with it not only a small amount of money but drivers license, business cards with importatnt numbers and, "plastic". I have become relient on plastic to buy things, checks are things of the past and the age of debit and credit cards are the money source of the future, wait no, today.
I buy gas (another harmful element being leaked into the air) with my "plastic". We rely and use and get more, and renew, and make more plasic money. This is just one of many examples of how we use plastic daily. and all the time.
in a vien attempt to "save the enviornment" a week ago I bought a travle coffe mug. I am also a health freak as well as a low key enviornmentalist; there for it has a stainless steel inside but, the ouside- shiny blue plastic!
We really are reliant on plasic, which means we are mostly dependant on China... As someone put it mildly last week- "China can't nuke us, we owe them too much money" So maybe we are safe from being "nuked" but we are not safe from the trap of buying and creating more opertunites for plastic.
We also don't often make the connection to our phones, computers, water bottles, coffee mugs, hair brushes, and more that are infatc, plastic.
With one of my favorite holidays around the cornner, Christmas, I see plastic strings of Christmas lights, plastic reindeer, and gift wrapping galore...
-Caileigh Bryant
i remember in 9th grade, we were asked to clean up the quad instead of going to advisee that morning. we picked up a lot of trash. i remember thinking, we have such a nice quad, why would people littler it with garbage? ever since then i have picked up trash when i have been walking, or even driving. i cant believe people have grown to be so lazy they cant simply throw away their trash. like you had said during class, there was a trash bin located just a few fee away. however they chose the plant instead, because it was closer. people have become so lazy and blind they cannot see the decaying planet around them. however they do seem to find enough energy to blame everything else on everyone else. and i'm not saying i am not responsable for some of the garbage in that trash island. but at least i can reconize it.
its like the people who recycle and reuse are mothers and every other joe is a messy little kid behind them, messing up everything they just cleaned, and doing it faster that the mother can clean up. there needs to be more people aware and actively recycling/reusing then people messing it up.
~~Keely
This blog made me think about how much plastic I use. I try to do my part by recycling, but who knows what they do with it? I mean, what they ACTUALLY do with it. One solution seems simple enough, though it probably will never happen: soda companies going back to glass. Sure, glass costs more, but with such an enormous amount of people who buy soda, the companies would still do fine. Take me for example. I buy coca-cola at least a few times a week. We have students in the class that buy soda every single day. Hey--if companies like Sobe or Orangina (they sure don't make as much as coke or pepsi) can afford to cough up the extra dough for glass, than the big dogs sure can as well.
--Tyler
I agree, some kind of action should be taken because there is so much waste in the world. the whole recycle motto slogan thing is Reduce Reuse recylce. Reduce, Reuse first. If you want to reduce your impact on the earth don't just recycle, because lots of recyclable things are made up of new materials. You're still adding to the problem because you're still consuming which means more production is taking place.
I have no hope that most of the world will ever do this, though. Like I said before no one is really going to want to do something about a problem until it is relavant to them. We live in an instant gratification era, and why would anyone want to reuse something when they could go out and buy a brand new something to replace it? If you take the time to think of the impact that every tiny purchase you make has, the impact of everything you throw away, I would think things would be different. But we live in a country where questions aren't asked often enough, where we can't even fix the economy in an effective long term way, just for right now. Spending money that you don't have to help the auto industry by selling more brand new cars that have to be manufactured? Maybe there was some kind of solution to this...maybe we should have gone for public transportation instead. In France everyone drives tiny cars, nothing bigger than what they need. No one in a city needs a suburban or some offroading vehicle.
So we live in a land of excess. By picking up trash yes, you're fixing the problem of the past but to fix the long term it would probably be best to REDUCE your trash out put, by REUSING things and REDUCING your unneccesary purchases. Or something along the lines of that.
just sayin is all.
-Laura
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