Our throw-away society

zound

Check out this video if you have 20 minutes to spare - it really is awesome. Anyone want to add their thoughts on how to change societys throwaway mentality?

The story of stuff

new hope and happiness

The life style of the Normadic Rashaida might be insightful?

I love this video. I've watched it several times and follow them on Facebook. I've made a huge shift this year in not having consumer mentality. It feels good to declutter, but better to not need to. Their is beauty and peace in simplicity. It really frees up the evenings and weekends, to just enjoy nature, yoga, social events or read in peace at home.

Like anything, I think each of us doing our part and trying to motivate by our example, is going to make a difference.

I work in an office and it takes someone being motivated and following through on the recycling front, in a NON critical way, to get others on board. We have a ways to go, but we have improved over the past year.

I often think, if people had thought differently in the past 50 years, would we have become such a throwaway society? If all those living that didn't care about their personal environment had accepted that some guy in the sky wouldn't make it all magically better for their special enjoyment, would they care about what they bought and threw away the ?

designs

Every Land Fill in Southern California is over capacity. Some reached capacity over 20 years ago. 22 billion pieces of plastic packaging are used and thrown away every year just in Southrn California.

We need stronger recycling programs.

We need different materials for packaging that can be recycled.

krejames

Will check this out. Thanks for posting.

WTWizard

Reduce: This means not buying so much cheap crap. Get durable items instead. I got plenty of clothing from L.L. Bean, which is better than what you get at crap mart, and that saves something like 80% of the materials. That means I only pollute 20% for the same utility I would have got at crap mart. Bonus: It works better, and you save money in the long run. I also get LED light bulbs that last much longer than those squiggly things, NiMH batteries, durable flashlights, and electronic devices that are going to last. Instead of dumping my computer when it is only 5 years old, I simply upgraded the RAM and the hard drive. It still works as well as the new one would have, and I double the use of the machine for less than 10% of the additional waste.

Reuse: Getting items that can be reused. NiMH batteries with quality chargers is a good place to start. Reusable metal water bottles instead of plastic that is going to develop holes helps. I also reuse vacuum cleaner parts that normally are tossed--it helps to get items designed to be reused. Another trick is to reuse those grocery bags you get at your supermarket as rubbish bags instead of buying rubbish bags. This saves quite a bit of plastic, also saving plenty of money.

Recycle: If I can recycle something in my community, I recycle it. Here, the law says you must recycle metal and glass containers, plastic with a 1 or 2, and corrugated cardboard. You may recycle aerosol cans (no spray paint or pesticides, though), scrap aluminum, plastics with numbers 1-7, all paper including glossy catalogs and junk mail, all cardboard, drink boxes, gable top milk containers, and all glass bottles of any color. I generally recycle all that I can recycle--and, when it comes to my attention they are accepting new items for recycling, I recycle them.

Now, what happens among the jokehovians? I cannot think of a group that is more wasteful than those things are. They waste gas and resources printing littera-trash that shouldn't even be printed in the first place, and more to distribute them. They constantly change their standards, making people throw away fine working items that were fine last year or even last week but no longer meet Brother Hounder's standards. Light blue dress shirts that were fine last month? You might have to get pure white this month only to have to get the light blue again later. And I never saw a recycling bin at a Kingdumb Hell. Don't those jokehovians believe in recycling? Even corrugated cardboard their littera-trash comes in goes straight into the rubbish!