New York City has an exceptional system for tracking the waste of its industries and residents. It can keep track of what gets thrown out and where it goes. It knows what can be recycled and which materials decay safely. It knows what industries and activities produce toxic and persistent chemicals that could maim people and damage the environment. It just doesn’t put this that knowledge to as much good use as it could.
That’s the problem with most of the world. We have all the information at our fingertips. We have opportunities to reverse the trend—sometimes they’re even shoved in front of us by others. We know what we can do better. We just don’t do it. Instead of taking our plastic bottle home to recycle it, we throw it wherever is convenient. Instead of packing our own lunch, we eat at McDonald’s. Instead of buying solar panels, we buy a third plasma-screen television. Cultural norms in the West today emphasize instant gratification whenever possible, and this leads to a huge system of efficient wastefulness. Today’s norms emphasize convenience, and this leads to laziness—or, to put it more kindly, to a general sense that things that require a little more work to get aren’t worth the effort. And, despite cultural norms that claim to appreciate independence and individuality, most people still continue to do as the majority does—whether it means “forgetting” to recycle, not thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions or simply not caring.
When it comes to the environment, this boils down to soiled disposable diapers floating in the Rio de Janeiro. We know that there is no way to recycle these things—they will persist for ages to come. Their numbers will keep growing, unless: a) people stop having babies altogether, or b) people start using cloth or biodegradable diapers. What stuns me is the fact that their mass production and use ever started. What dumbfounds me is how today, having had decades to ruminate the consequences, people have still not done anything to stop or reverse this trend.
Didn’t the inventors stop to think that there would eventually be mountains upon mountains of used diapers with nowhere to go? Did they maybe imagine they could be used to build out the coasts of Manhattan or San Francisco? Did they hope that somebody would eventually shoot them into the Sun, or find something else to do with them? Did they just forget that the Earth does not expand into infinity and that everything produced takes up some more of its finite space? Or did they not bother to consider any of these possibilities, deciding that they didn’t care, or that—despite creating it—the problem was not their responsibility to solve?
The data is at our hands, along with the wherewithal to improve things. We can begin to turn our ship away from the iceberg whenever we feel like it—even if it’s only by fractions of a degree at a time. So why does change drag its feet? It goes back to the way that people think, and what they value. If cultural norms insist that something—a lifestyle, a tradition—is right, then not many people will easily believe that anything is wrong with it, however harmful it is. People might not see a reason for change. Why should a faraway coastline be more important than your ability to change diapers as quickly, cheaply and easily as possible? Why should anything be more important than doing those annoying day-to-day tasks of living as quickly, cheaply and easily as possible?
The city of New York has laws meant to prevent toxins from infiltrating the environment and people’s lives. Carbon filters and dumping regulations have certainly helped curb pollution and improve quality of life, but it’s hard to imagine that these timely developments would’ve happened at the hands of corporations. And, whenever there are violations—as, unfortuanetely, there are—, the corporations make their excuses. My favorite so far:
EPA: These ponds have 20x the level of benzene deemed legally safe! Exxon Mobile: . . . No they don’t.
And, whatever their profits are, one of their common excuses involves corporations pointing out that it is their honor-bound duty to provide the consumers with what they want—quickly, cheaply, and easily.
Quick. Cheap. Easy. Are these qualities all that we, as a society, as a world, value? We need to reflect upon what we, as human beings, want out of life, and decide carefully.
