Suggested Reading & Activism Spotlight: Trash-Free Living

Activism Spotlight

“Every time you reach for the trash,” Amy said, “if you make that motion a conscious thing, [you realize that you] reach for the trash so many times a day. I really was kind of amazed.”

Imagine living for an entire year without producing garbage. Impossible, right?

Apparently not, because that’s exactly what a young professional couple, Amy and Adam Korst, did from July 6th, 2009 to July 6th, 2010. Their original goal was to produce no more than one garbage bag of waste, and instead, they ended up with only a shoebox full of items that could not be recycled, reduced, reused, or composted between the two of them. 

Picture courtesy of: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-07-21-trash_N.htm

In comparison, the average American produces 4.6 pounds of garbage daily, three pounds of which goes to a landfill. We recycle only 32% of our total waste, and we trash 99% of everything we buy within six months. So, according to these estimates and averages, the Korsts saved about 2,190 pounds of waste from the landfill, which is over a ton.

How did they do it?

Harsh Facts, Ecofriendly Economics & March's Animal

            I hope that including harsh facts about the state of our environment on Viridorari will give people the jolt that they need to start taking action to incorporate greener habits into their lives. This week's facts are geared toward Americans, and these facts did not surprise me. I love being a United States citizen, but the one thing about my country that I’m most ashamed of is our staggering amount of inherent wastefulness. Waste is something all of us, not just Americans, but especially Americans, need to work on. Brace yourselves!

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 30% of the waste, and the United States industry admits to 4 billion pounds of toxic pollution released each year. They key word in that sentence is "admits." We generate 4.6 pounds of trash per person per day on average int he United States, an amount doubled from thirty years ago, and the most in the world. If we put all the solid waste collected in the U.S. (I'm assuming annually) in a line of average garbage trucks, that line of trucks would cross the country, from NYC to L.A., more than 100 times. Finally, 99% of the things we buy are not in use after 6 months. 

            

One website also offered up a very moving quote:

"Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into ritual, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... we need things produced, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
-Retailing analyst Victor LeBeau just after World War II.