Zero Waste – It IS Possible
When people consume, nobody really takes a second to think what happens to their waste. To them, it simply disappears, and becomes somebody else’s problem. However, it’s alarming to see what really happens after a single day, when New York City discards 50,000 tons of garbage daily. This waste must be taken elsewhere, and it is shocking to see how inefficient NYC was in terms of waste management up until 2001. Furthermore, it is unacceptable to allow this waste to be piled up in a town in Pennsylvania. Who knows how much harm the landfill in Tullytown is really doing?
Prior to 2001, NYC had shipped all of their garbage to the Fresh Kills Landfill, causing diesel-fueled trucks to run for miles more than they really had to. In the 1940s, way after the invention of the assembly line, people should have had the mentality that it would be most efficient to split the waste management responsibilities between the boroughs that produced them. Only in 2001 did NY begin to transition to a more efficient method, which includes creating transfer stations all around New York. However, the ethical question of where to place these transfer stations became commonplace. Nobody wanted to live near these transfer station, and Tony Ard was right when he said that they don’t belong in any residential area. They simply don’t belong anywhere.
What I don’t understand is, why create transfer stations when you are just moving the problem to another location? Instead of trying to make the garbage magically disappear; why not take a step towards reusability. Why can’t New York be more like San Francisco, where they are successfully practicing a policy of zero waste? It is clear to me that the New York Officials are thinking only on the short-term track, and this has to stop. There is no time for change tomorrow, change must happen today.
On another note, the presentations this past week were rather moving. Treece, Kansas and Picher, Oklahoma were once settled towns. All that remains today are mounds of chat, which make the air toxic to breathe. This metal mining was unethical, and posed a serious threat to the immediate communities. Lead and other metals poisoned children, causing life-threatening illnesses. I suppose the towns people did not mind, as the mining provided jobs and economic prosperity, however it seems like there was no thought as to what serious hazards these towers of poison would pose to society. The fact that the EPA would then decide to shove these beacons of death into the ground is even more unsettling. They are creating a potential disaster, and the land could be seriously compromised if this poisonous material ever trickled into a ground water source. The towns’ imminent destruction was inevitable, and the irresponsible mining projects should have never taken place.
I enjoyed the ad-campaign as well – Jackie and Joe put across a serious message. The advertisement could have been taken in two different lights. One – in the sense that New Yorkers are polluting one of the greatest cities in the world and that this needs to stop, and Two – in the sense that we can should use the garbage that we produce and build on what we already have with that. We should promote the idea of zero waste, and begin creating more ad-campaigns to drive this movement. Media is one of the most influential means of getting a message across, and it should be taken advantage of for this good cause. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. We need to put the idea across America that producing waste is NOT ok, and should emphasize that eventually, the harm that the individual does to the planet will come back to haunt them. Zero waste is possible, it’s just a matter of getting the message across the nation.
