March 5
Today I went to the waste disposal station with my grandfather. This seemed so counter-productive to what we have been studying all quarter. There were a few things that it brought to mind while I was there. I did notice there were different recycle bind for the specific things. There was a scrap metal bin and a wood bin and few others for recycling. I thought this was good that some of the more discarded items could be recycled. However, the majority of it was getting just tossed into the “away” that society doesn’t think about. So one thing the sprung to mind is that maybe there should be more plastics recycled. However, this comes into a serious predicament. Why in the world do we have to pay to dispose of trash? If we want a cleaner world maybe we shouldn’t be penalized for being a good person and not just polluting the world at and advanced rate. My solution is that our taxes should go towards something like this at the same time as more advanced recycling methods. I truly see our lack of reusing the resources we have already collected as a major problem and this is why I would be completely game for paying slightly higher taxes to help support this. After all, labor isn’t free and you would still need to pay in one form or another to support the workers but I could see the overall costs of living start to decrease because we would be reducing the amount of effort to get new resources and as an added bonus it would help the earth a ton as well. If we don’t have to pay for all the labor down the line such as mining and synthesizing the material in the first place we would be just that much better off. If you can cut steps out of the equation and get a better outcome, how can you not jump all over that? I don’t really see humans adapting effectively to the Anthropocene in a way that will make humans change their ways in a way to stop consuming and go completely green, but what if we changed the use of resources in a way that benefits everyone’s pocketbook. People pay attention to money.