After a couple weeks living off-campus, I'm beginning to get a grasp of the tremendous amount of waste that we produce every day. Its simultaneously shocking and appalling.
As someone who has been in the Dirty from the last day of classes through commencement, I saw people, in a mad rush to move out, throw out a staggering amount of books, furniture, and electronics. Moreover, many of these things were still in excellent condition; some were never even opened or used. I'm talking about everything from sealed textbooks to stereos to desk lamps to couches to Maruchan microwavable noodles.
Luckily, Yale has a Spring Salvage program which picks up students' "trash." Spring Salvage picks up a large amount of material for storage at warehouse and resale. This way, many items were able to retain value. Though Spring Salvage is an excellent program (I can't even imagine the tons that were simply thrown out on moving day before Spring Salvage was introduced), certain things still need a lot of work...off-campus locations, which houses a significant proportion of the student population, remained largely untouched. The house next to mine spilled some real treasures into its backyard and subsequently into the dumpster. There was at least a thousand dollars worth of books. There were also iPod speakers, keyboards, two desktop computers, and tuxedos that were simply going to be tossed out. A wide spectrum of people, from students to the homeless, salvaged what they could but a huge amount of things still ended up getting trashed. As always, I failed to break the stereotype and took what I could store, thinking about how much money I could jilt the incoming freshman for my top-notch goods (just kidding (but not really)). It was sad to see the truck come to haul a dumpster containing thousands of dollars worth of material away to a landfill or for incineration.
The next two weeks were reunion week. During reunions, Yale dining services always makes more food than alumni will eat. Commons buys a large amount of "display" vegetables that are simply thrown out afterwards. Some of my housemates had the foresight to get the vegetables; we used it all and didn't have to buy food for the next week. Later on, we received over 30 legs of lamb...we decided to donate much of the food to a homeless shelter but we weren't even sure about this decision. Since the homeless shelters will always receive a set amount of food from the government, are we simply producing more waste by donating this food?
These events have really set me wondering about the way we, as privileged citizens of the richest country in the world, choose to live. I imagine people threw away those computers simply because they didn't need it or because they could afford to buy a new one. I remember my father telling about life in Communist China - everything was reused because it was a necessity. Books were passed down for generations and pencils were sharpened until only a few centimeters of lead remained. Now that it isn't a necessity, do we still have the right to throw things away simply because we can? Then again, I hear the economist's argument that our consumption is what is driving our economy, that if we stopped consuming so much, our economy would crash. I'm not so sure. What does "crash" actually mean? That we'll stop producing so many consumer goods? Maybe its what we need - a nation of thrifty, hard-working people that can balance consumerism and material reward with higher ideals. Right now, I'm not sure that "economic growth" is entirely a good thing. We need to seriously examine the way we live and consume.
2 comments:
I completely agree. Throwing things out is probably the least costly and most costly thing to do.
Now where would you happen to keep said items, say perchance if I were interested in buying a used tuxedo?
Beyond human activities that are necessary to reach a quality living, production and consumption of goods are not only wasting, but also raping of the environment. Our economy is both driven by and promoting consumption, which simply feeds to the greedy capitalists at the expense of the mother earth. Under the guiding principle of maximum output and maximum profit of the old economics, we chase more and more wealth to "dispose".
We dispose because we can afford it, because it is convinient, and because that is way we have been living, but aboslutely not because it is necessary. What you see on Yale campus and many campuses mirrors the behavior of the people and the society. To save the earth for the future generations, it takes, first and formost, changes in our behavior. That must start from each of us. If the college students cannot lead this change, who else will?
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