Speech: Grace Goulson

Our world is trashed. No, not in that way-- but literally trashed. Litter scattered along the highway, plastic bags floating in the ocean, heaps of trash waiting in landfills. We as humans continue to waste, to throw away, to get rid of. But are we really getting rid of what goes in our trash bins? What happens to our garbage once it is out of sight, once we’ve shifted the responsibility of dealing with it to someone else? We have so much stuff nowadays, which means that more things are getting tossed in the trash, and more waste exists that just can’t be broken down by natural processes. And this wastefulness is negatively impacting Earth’s beautiful landscapes, the water that comes from our kitchen sinks, and the very soil that we walk on. Something must be done about this horrible atrocity, and it is essential that we become better stewards of our planet, so that it may be for the betterment of all who inhabit this place that we call home. So I will talk about the ways in which it is affecting us already, the causes of this mindset, and finally, the steps we can take towards becoming more sustainable and less wasteful.

First let’s take a look at what the situation is. The average person generates around four and a half pounds of trash a day- that’s 1.5 tons per year, according to greenwaste.com. In the north pacific there is a swirling vortex of trash larger than the size of Texas; in the water there are six kilograms of plastic for every one kilogram of plankton. That means in the deep ocean there is more trash than life. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die from ingesting plastic found in the ocean. As we see in the documentary Trashed, a garbage incinerator in Iceland releases dangerously high levels of poisonous dioxins which cause a farmer’s cows to fall ill. Dioxins from plastics are extremely dangerous to us and can cause many health issues, including the inability to reproduce. As Jeremy Irons in the documentary says, “This is not about what might happen in some distant future. The ground beneath our feet is already full of rubbish. The air is tainted with man-made chemicals. And our oceans are turning into a toxic soup of floating debris.”

So why are humans so inclined to be wasteful? It stems from a growing insensitivity toward the environment and a shrinking awareness of the rippling effect that our actions will have. It also doesn’t help that plastic is everywhere and that less of the stuff we produce can be broken down by nature. The packaging industry can also be blamed partially; so much of the waste found in the oceans is plastic packaging, and often much of these bags and boxes are unnecessary. We have also developed an attitude of “out of sight, out of mind” where we don’t consider what will become of our waste once it has left our realm. In an interview for an upcoming documentary, Ravi Gulati posits that the root of our issue is that “we are not looking at our relationship with nature in the right spirit.” Today’s society is so obsessed with living in the now that we fail to look toward the future or really anywhere else outside our own little worlds. Some may say to leave this issue to the next generation, or leave it to the government and corporations to take care of, but no. Now is the time to act, and every step toward less waste is a step in the right direction. It doesn’t matter that all you do is use cloth bags instead of plastic ones at the grocery store, or that you only drink out of reusable water bottles- anything that keeps trash out of the landfill or out of the ocean makes a difference.

And there are so many things we can do to reduce our individual waste. Just minor adjustments in our everday lives. I gather inspiration from Bea Johnson, a blogger and novelist who, along with her husband and two sons, generates just 1 quart of waste per year. Johnson claims that maintaining a zero-waste home is not only good for the environment, but also good for one’s overall quality of life. Now I’m not saying to go home and use an alum stone in place of deodorant, or collect water from your shower to be reused, but there are countless ways you can alter your lifestyle so that you produce less waste. You must always, always be conscious of what you are throwing away and what you can do to decrease your consumption. For Johnson, she follows the five R’s (as opposed to the just the three): refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot-- and only in that order. Recycling should always be your last resort, before composting. First you have to refuse what you do not need; make it so that these goods are never produced in the first place. This means cancelling junk mail, not taking free pens at events, and refusing to pick up that handout that you really didn’t want or need but felt obligated to take. The smallest change in your life counts, and even though laws can be passed and funds can be raised, it all starts at the individual level.

It’s disturbing how much waste we produce. We are trashing our planet. And that needs to stop. Now. Reducing our waste comes with a better understanding of how nature works, and a stronger awareness of the waste we are generating individually and the effect that humans can have on the earth. So go home, make a compost bin, reuse scrap paper, invest in a reusable water bottle. Do whatever it takes, but keep in mind that this is our planet, our home, and we have to take care of it.