Environmental and Sustainability Movement

Take a moment to imagine the realization that a young boy came to when two of his favorite movies had a large plotline that was somewhat based on the problems of trash. Wall-E, the famous Pixar movie, was based on a small robot that was left behind on Earth’s surface alone. His job was to clean the garbage that the human population left behind when they went into space to escape their problems. Toy Story 3, another Pixar movie, contained a scene with garbage that was vital to the plot, in which the characters are rescued from a trash furnace that was consuming literally tons of trash a minute. These two movies tried to make the American population aware of the ever growing trash situation, however, Americans quickly forgot about the Earth shattering situation that they are causing. The solution to the world’s trash problem is easy; people need to be educated on the problems of trash and given an easy way to fix it. People should be required to visit a landfill, educated on the severity of the trash problem, and should be rewarded for changing their habits to improve the problem.

“We throw out about 254 million tons of solid waste per year in America alone” for comparison that is about 1.27 million average sized blue whales. That is a ton of trash! But, as Americans we do not see all this trash. We barely even touch it. It is all pretty much taken care of for us. So the trash is sort of out of sight out of mind. Let me put this into some

A teacher once told me, “One mans trash is another mans treasure, what he doesn’t appreciate the next man will.” Until recently analyzing this statement I always pondered about it as a metaphor using the thoughts, and ideas of people, but after reading Garbology I have come up with a literal process of reusing trash. On average Americans wastes 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States which ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. According to Edward Humes, the author of Garbology, “Garbage has become one the most accurate measures of prosperity in the twenty-first-century America and the world,” which proves that trash is a means to improving the success rate of Americans. This reminds me of the words of Confucius who stated, “When a goal cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goal, adjust the action step” because with the knowledge from garbology we can

Much of this trash ends up in the ocean harming not only marine life, but us too. However, this is not only happening in America it’s happening all over the world with China at 8.82 million metric tons of mismanaged waste. All this waste if caught in a gyre, can lead to one of the garbage patches. This has been happening since we started using plastic but it the garbage patches were discovered in the early 1990’s. We keep throwing trash away that keeps being misplaced, then it ends up in the oceans with the rest of the trash. I propose multiple solutions, to enforce plastic bag ban and to enforce recycling. California has banned the use of plastic bags, meaning that if you do use them a fine will be put in place. Environment California explained how before the plastic bag ban California used up to 19 billion plastic bags each year with less than five percent being recycled. However, we can change that. By using less plastic bags we harm the ocean less. Another solution is to each week collect each household’s trash, per pound of trash found in the recycling bin provided by the city should be a $11 fine. Tiffany Edmonds, Solid Waste Management Department spokeswoman, explained why they started the fine “ It is an attempt to change behavior. The fine covers the cost of sending a garbage collection truck to the house to pick up the contaminated recycling bin” this will encourage people to recycle. Since the plastic

In addition, there exist some environmental risks related to producing landfill. Even though the Australian Federal Government is not offering incentives to repurpose waste, some communities and State and Local governments are offering incentives for this practice. The main purpose of this is to avoid the disposing of waste in landfills, due to the fact that it requires so much time, energy and space, injuring our planet's health (McCabe,

As a member of Environmental Club, I participate in sorting and processing the recyclables in the high school once a month. A few times a year, the Environmental Club holds a “trash bash,” where our entire club meets at a “trashed” area in our community and cleans it up. This normally takes most of the

Those of us here at Mountain View Reclamation center want to give back to our community in more than just waste collection and renewable energy. We want to turn the landfill into a park at the end of its lifetime. A landfill in Staten Island, New York is currently doing this and we would model our process after there’s(Jacobs,2016). It would take several years for it to become functional, but it has the potential to be a beautiful park. When we reach the end of the landfill's

The current waste management in America should be improved. There is trash everywhere, and people do nothing about it. People are destroying our beautiful country with trash. Sure, our garbage and recycled materials are picked up once a week, but no one is worried about the trash that is just sitting there. People look at trash and do nothing about it. They walk by it like it was a squirrel or something. People should help pick it up and throw it away. It’s super simple. Just pick it up, and find the nearest trash can and then put in there. It’s that simple. The current should and needs to be fixed.

Landfills are a growing problem yet statistics claim that landfills have gone down from 8,000 landfills in the 80’s to 3,000 landfills today. While this is true, it is misleading as it failed to mention that as the years have passed, many have switched from small, local landfills to mega-landfills. Facts like these often understate the issue as landfills are a vague topic for most, needing more public attention and discussion. Landfills will take 450 years at minimum to degrade and when decomposed, turns into many toxic products. It takes up so much space while simultaneously ruining the soil for future farming use. This is important for the ever growing population where space is getting more valuable and early precautions will definitely help.

When I was five years old I began school. In Kindergarden we learned basic things like letters, numbers, and how not to be fully engulfed in flames. For some reason, 2004 was the height of anti-fire education in Missouri and before I knew how to tie my shoes I knew that if I ever was ablaze, to cover my face, fall to my knees, and roll back and fourth. This is what my institution placed serious value upon and because I was a student of that institution I also placed serious value upon it. The same idea must be applied to a university's teaching of environmental sustainability. This is discussed in David Orr's "What is Education For?" Through choosing a curriculum a university chooses what it places value onto, by making the environment a priority it showcases to the future generations that environmental wellness is an important responsibility for them to take ownership.

Every year Americans collectively create approximately 208 million tons of municipal solid waste, which breaks down to 4.3 pounds of waste generated per American per day. In addition to this normal waste, the United States produces roughly 279 million tons of hazardous waste per year.1 All of this waste has to go somewhere. Two good methods of waste disposal, infrequently used, are incineration and recycling. However, any waste that is not recycled or incinerated ends up in America’s landfills. Landfills that are not in proper working order can pose a serious threat to humans and the environment, but ones that safely store all of their waste may possibly be helpful for the

Because of the landfill ‘solution,’ people are still running into the same problem that cities had in the early 1800s: people produce too much waste. Today in Great Britain, there is a massive shortage of landfill space. In 2010, the country estimated that the country’s landfills would be entirely filled by 2018. To solve this problem, initiatives like taxing landfill waste by the ton, trading rights to landfill space, and putting recycling percentage quotas on waste have gone into effect (De Castella). The

Those of us here at Mountain View Reclamation center want to give back to our community in more than just waste collection and renewable energy. We want to turn the landfill into a park at the end of its lifetime. A landfill in Staten Island, New York is currently doing this and we would model our process after there’s(Jacobs,2016). It would take several years for it to become functional, but it has the potential to be a beautiful park. When we reach the end of the landfill's lifespan will we will cap the garbage and shape into hills, covering it in six layers of

The issues pertaining to consumer’s role on creating more garbage over the years remains to be a controversial topic within the social and economic realms. Some issues that are in support of garbage include brining in revenue to the district, employs a great amount of people, feeds our economy by stimulating consumerism and the economy, allows individuals to live a mobile life, helps to keep disease away and sanitary living conditions, convenient in regards to disposing unwanted materials, and encourages composting. According to an organization called Less is More, “Organic wastes, such as food waste and yard waste, make up 25 to 50% of what people throw away…composting can significantly cut down on your overall trash.” Due to Americans now living in closer proximities to each other more garbage is being produced, but by understanding how compost their garbage efficiently can allow them to spend more on goods on the market. Some values that are in support of garbage include prosperity, valuing one’s quality of life and best interests, morality, and wanting the best for their health.

American citizens throw away millions of tons of garbage each year, and this trash has to go somewhere. While there are projects underway to clean and reuse this refuse most of it gets dumped into huge landfills. These landfills are disgusting festering blisters on our country's landscape. But people continue to consume and throw away more and more in the name of convenience. As they see it, when things get old, throw it away and get a new one. They blame the government for the trash problem, but the truth blame should be placed on themselves.