I think that it’s fair to say that I came out of class this week smarter than when I walked in, but I also think that it wouldn’t be untrue that I forgot most of it as well. Charts that track trends are, by nature, incredibly informative because they pack tons of data points into a timeline driven structure inherently meant for comparison. And in the few minutes that I pick at the fine details, I feel like I develop an understanding of the subject matter in a way that sweeps place and time in one gargantuan motion.
But it’s hard to say that without prolonged exposure or focused research that I will truly remember it. I can’t say that what we learn is uninteresting. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It serves to give weight to more than just the environmental impact of the present because it emphasizes the role of the past. In the moments when we see the information as a class and reflect on it through discussion, the things we learn seem very real to us. This, however, is overshadowed by the fact that the next slide holds something new for us that may or may not register. It would be horribly naïve though if I didn’t concede that all the issues we learn are somehow interconnected, so it’s not as if we are simply taking in disjointed pieces of knowledge that need to be independently understood. Doing so would be wrong and counter-productive to the pillars of true learning. The trouble—I must reiterate—is that there is so much to know for a matter that can’t just register superficially. Perhaps if the intent is to make me aware of as many issues as possible and then hope that I will pursue what is most compelling to me, then I can’t say that the current method is particularly flawed. However, knowing that I have to take a midterm in a couple of weeks that tests absolutely everything doesn’t feel nearly as compelling.
But concerning the actual subject matter of our class, I do have something more positive to say. The clinching factor for me was realizing that those 5 cents you get back when trading in those plastic Sprite bottles or aluminum Coke cans are actually a return of a mandatory payment. I know that if I were in power, I wouldn’t hesitate to raise the price and keep increasing it based on inflation—that 5-cent figure is more than half a century old. The apparent desire (though sometimes necessity) of returning those cans assuredly diminishes as time goes on and as 5 cents become ever more worthless. Having the tax gradually go up would of course raise the cost, but there is otherwise no incentive to actually return them—unless it is a source of income. In this way, keeping a 5-cent cap is actually double the hindrance because as the cost of living and food goes up, both the poor (who do a large portion of other people’s recycling by sifting and sorting through their trash) and the better off (who just don’t go out of their way to do so) find it less reasonable to deposit their bottles and cans.
The other thing that I found compelling was how the research about the composition of trash over the years could tell us something about our culture. The fact that a huge portion of our trash a hundred years ago was ash says something about the technology that dominated our households; now, however, ash occupies a rather small percentage. The constant percentage of food rather shocked me however. It struck me that we’re probably now eating more than before, but then it occurred to me that the statistics merely show the amount of trash as a percentage rather than as an absolute. I think that in order to make the numbers we’re learning about even more meaningful, it could be useful to know the actual weight in each time frame, rather than only the big general numbers we were given at the end.
