While reading this article, I just kept questioning humanity, specifically within New York City. Although it’s hard for me to imagine the size of the problem discussed in the article, as it’s hard for me to envision things unless I see it with my own eyes, this article was able to present the problem very blatantly so that even someone like me could understand it. The first instance when I questioned humanity was towards the beginning of the article, when the author talked about how the city just moved all the waste from one place (Freshkills) to another (neighboring states). I questioned the point of this, as I thought all it was doing was spending precious time, fuel & money to move something from one place to another, having no impact on solving the actual problem. The idea that they wanted to do this to the Upper East Side was even more ridiculous, especially when considering the immediately surrounding places listed in the article, like a public housing project for low income minorities and a sport and fitness center for children. When the testimony by Lorraine Johnson, I was surprised that something like this would even be legal and an option purposefully taken up by the city.
Going into the problem of throwaway culture introduced in the middle of the article, I agreed that there is a culture specific to NYC of eating out for breakfast and lunch and ordering in again for dinner that you cannot find in any other city. However, I did think that the mindset New Yorkers have when approaching the waste that is generated from these actions can be changed. The article goes on to list several different small changes that can be done to do this, and I questioned why New York has not taken up these measurements in the first place instead of trying to simply move their trash. For example, I was questioning why recycling is still optional for commercial entities, especially when considering how much waste they produce. In that section, I was also curious as to why the levels of recycling decreased from their peak of 23% in 2001. Also, things as simple as offering more recycling bins would be a good way to combat this problem, and I believe this would also change citizens’ attitude towards recycling in general. It also makes no sense that within the home, recycling plastic bottles is required, yet outside of it it isn’t. Contradictory moves by NYC like these really undermine the importance of recycling. And the 5c rule made to incentivize people to recycle is definitely not effective, considering I did not even know about it until I read this article. There are so many little things the city can do to create an actual solution for the problem of waste, instead of doing stupid things like just move the trash from place to place (which is reminiscent of the coastal erosion discussion we had before). I definitely think that with regulation by the city that is strict and small actions, people in NYC will be more conscious of their waste production.
