Oracle Online

I recycle, but I have doubts about focusing all of our efforts on recycling. Recycling is addressing only the symptoms of the problem. The problem is not what to do with all the waste we produce, but rather the production of waste itself. Americans consume. It’s what we do. Even the most conscientious of us still consumes far more than most people around the world.

When gas prices are high, you hear about solutions that usually consist of tune-ups at your local auto shop, or talking about how great it is that the automakers are researching hydrogen cars so that when the oil runs out, we’ll still be able to drive everywhere we want to go (and keep the automakers and energy companies in business). Sometimes an enterprising person will circulate chain mail over the Internet telling us not to buy gas on a certain day. This, of course, sends the strong message to the oil companies that we will fill our cars on one day instead of another.

Speaking of petroleum by-products, isn’t it great that our water bottles are recyclable? We can pump a energy into the manufacture and distribution of the bottles, fill them with filtered tap water, then distribute them to stores. Some of them may make their way to recycling bins, contents of which will be driven by diesel-powered trucks to recycling facilities, which will use more energy to melt them and create more plastic bottles.

The alternative? Get a glass bottle and use it. Use it again. Wash it if it gets dirty, and then use it yet again. If you hate that tap-water taste, get a pitcher with a filter.

But it doesn’t stop there. Consumption permeates our culture. Commodities form a large part of our identity. We use the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the music we listen to to express our identity. These commodities--the clothing, cars, music--all came from someplace. Someone extracted natural resources, refined them, manufactured goods from them, shipped them and ultimately sold them to you and me.

Someone in Chile is smelting aluminum and creating toxic pollutants, and in India Coca-Cola has contaminated groundwater, so that you can drink that can of pop or soda or whatever you call it. That pair of leather Nikes required: ranch land in Argentina stolen from indigenous peoples, leather tanners in Brazil, sweatships in Indonesia for assembly, and of course oil to transport them all the way around the world. Your box of Kleenex means clear-cutting old-growth forest. Your Kodak disposable camera came from Rochester, New York, where Kodak spews out more dioxin than any other company in New York and pays EPA fines rather than reduce toxic emissions.

And this is possible with the help of the U.S. military, which has invaded just about every resource-rich “less developed nation” in the world at the behest of businesses that wanted to exploit those nations’ resources. The Pentagon itself exists to consume. You pay your taxes, and then the Pentagon spends halfčto the tune of $440 billion. Your taxes build tanks, missiles, bombs, nuclear weapons, and depleted uranium ammunition. The United States is responsible for almost half of all defense spending worldwide. Thse missiles, bombs, and depleted uranium shells are then used to destroy countries like Iraq, which your taxes then pay to rebuild (via Halliburton and others) using more natural resources that have to come from somewhere.

And all this is fueled by Americans buying crap we don’t need, won’t use very much, and which have toxic byproducts and pollution and end up in landfills or, occasionally, get recycled in an energy-intensive process. It starts with us. To recap, we buy crap, and the military buys weapons using our money to coerce other nations to allow our businesses to extract resources (including cheap labor) to manufacture more crap.

So if you want a clean environment (not to mention much less war and suffering in the world), reduce, reuse, and recycle. But mostly reduce.