People are often overwhelmed by the problems our world is facing. We wonder how we can make a difference when so much is going wrong. Fortunately we can actually have a big impact on our world by making simple and logical changes in our daily lives.
Think for a moment about all the things you use for a limited amount of time every day and then toss into the nearest garbage bin. Paper coffee cups, the plastic and paper bags you get at the grocery store, or the wax paper a barista wraps around your morning muffin. These are all things that are produced at a massive scale to meet the needs of millions of consumers as they rush through the daily grind. They are goods used and discarded in a matter of minutes.
Where did these goods come from? A lot of work and resources has been used to get that cup into your hand. Trees are harvested and energy used to ship these raw materials to a factory. Ships, trucks, and trains are built to transport goods and materials. Processing facilities were constructed to convert pulp to paper, package the goods, and ship them out. This work represents hours of labor by hundreds of thousand of human beings and the machines they employ to reduce the burden of their tasks.
According to Recycling-Revolution’s “Paper Recycling Facts” (www.recycling-revolution.com) a 15 year old tree can supply enough paper for 700 grocery bags. Sound like a lot of bags for one tree, right? Maybe there isn’t that big of a problem after all! Unfortunately there is. A grocery store can go through that many bags in a few hours. In a year a supermarket can pack 60,500,000 bags with food. That means one store can use around three and a half million trees per year just so you can carry your food out to your car and then into your home.
Similarly Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour. Recycling paper and plastic helps a lot, but there are even simpler solutions to this problem of mass waste. You can reduce your impact dramatically through a few steps that require nothing but a little foresight and planning.
Instead of accepting your pre-work coffee in a waxed paper cup, which is generally not recyclable, invest a few dollars in a travel mug. That takes care of the thousands of paper cups you might have used in the next year. Most coffee venues offer small discounts when you bring your own cup. They appreciate your desire to help the environment.
You are also saving your favorite shop owner money, buying all those cups is a big investment. Increases in the cost of cups often leads to increases in what you pay for a beverage. Imagine the increase in profits a small coffee shop manager would enjoy if we all stopped using paper cups! They might even cut the cost of you morning treat a bit in return.
Think about other ways you can reduce your environmental impact. Buy a few canvas shopping bags and you can eliminate the need to accept disposable bags at the store. Store clerks often bag small items like pens or a bottle of aspirin, items we are entirely capable of carrying on our own. Kindly ask the clerk not to provide you with that particular service. If you enjoy soda but the biggest bottle possible and refill your own cups from it, it will use a lot less resources than consuming multiple single serving bottles in the long run.
Recycling is still a great way to reduce pollution and waste, but it takes a lot of energy to get the job done. That is energy most likely fueled by environmentally unfriendly sources like coal and oil. Fortunately, we can have an even greater positive impact on the environment simply by reducing our reliance on disposable goods.
As you can now see it is really quite easy to help save the world. It will cost you no extra time or money in the long run. All in takes is a desire to cure the world of needless inefficiencies so that we can all enjoy a healthier environment!
