Our Wasteful Ways

Wasteful Thinking Ways

You know how most people feel nowadays, right? “I’m home from the store, let’s throw this plastic grocery bag away.” “Oh my God, those new shoes are so last year. Let’s go out and get some new ones.” “Oh hey, the new iPod has a touch screen? Let’s ditch this fully working one and go get a new one!” Well, the truth is, while this kind of lifestyle may be fun to live, it means we have very poor consumption habits. Not only does this cause us to spend a lot more money, but it is also an unsustainable activity. If we continue living like this, this earth won’t last much longer; if we want to keep our future generations alive, we need to change our consumption habits drastically.

This kind of wasteful thinking didn’t just happen recently. It can be traced all the way back to the Progressive Era in the United States of America, starting from the late 1900’s. During this time, a lot of big businesses popped up. These businesses were doing a lot of things such as slaughtering animals for food, cutting trees for lumber, building houses for shelter, mining for resources, you name it. The problem with this is that the owners of the businesses didn’t care what happened as a result of making their product. All they cared about was making money. The slaughterhouses went through a large amount of animals and acted like no matter how many they slaughtered, there would still be more for them. The tree cutting businesses cut down a massive amount of trees and acted like no matter how many they cut, there would still be more for them. The miners mined an abundance of resourced and acted like there would still be more for them no matter what. Of course, these businesses could have done a lot of things to improve the sustainability of their actions, such as taking from resources conservatively instead of going through them at a very rapid rate. Not a lot of people noticed the problem with this at the time, and everybody had more important matters to deal with. However, this started a slippery slope towards many things that we do today being unsustainable.

Although this issue didn’t matter to a lot of people, there were a few people who did notice that the businesses’ actions weren’t sustainable. One of the most important people in that group was President Theodore Roosevelt. He realized that there was an ever-increasing amount of people who were coming into the United States, and he knew that they weren’t going to stop any time soon. During his entire lifetime, he worked to save land and resources from going to waste. Overall, he created 150 Natural Forests, 51 Federal Bird Reservations, Four Natural Game Preserves, Five National Parks, 18 National Monuments, 24 Reclamation Projects, and more. Overall, he saved about 230,000,000 acres of land! Of course, there was resistance against these movements by people who wanted to earn more money and didn’t see the point in saving all that land and all those resources at the time, but Theodore and everybody who wanted to help conserve showed a huge amount of perseverance and kept fighting for the land. Normally, solutions to problems like this are either political, economic, or social, but in this case, the solution was all three. The solution was social because it actually forced people to not waste land and resources where they normally would, it was economic because there would be a lot more money being spent and made if that land wasn’t protected, and it was political once Theodore became President and started making more drastic changes because of it. All of the logical thinking and perseverance that Theodore and his supporters showed is very admirable and should be looked up to today.

Now, in the present, there are a lot of things that have changed, but this issue still stands strong today. In addition to what companies were doing back in the Progressive Era, they are now taking extremely toxic chemicals, such as Dioxin, and releasing them into the air and ground. There is also a lot more trash generated now, and while a lot of it can be recycled, it isn’t and is just being dumped into a landfill. However, everything isn’t doomed for humanity. We simply need to be more aware of what we are doing that harms the environment, and what we could do to better ourselves. The changes don’t need to be big groundbreaking ideas. For instance, if you have a lot of things that are plugged in in your house, but only half of those are ever being used, you could unplug the things that aren’t being used, because they still take up electricity. You could also bring the same bag in every time you go grocery shopping, instead of taking plastic bags every single time and just throwing them away later. Try walking someplace if it is only a short distance anyway. Also, don’t think that every single industry is just out to kill the entire human population; there are a lot of companies that realize that the earth is in trouble and are doing things to help lower consumption rates and make our consumption habits better. For instance, a lot of grocery stores are selling reusable bags now and more and more companies are recycling their products and using recycled material instead of just throwing everything away. A lot of major car companies are making hybrid and electric cars that use little to no gas at all. If everyone did little things like these, it would add up to a big help in the long run.

The main thing that we need to remember is to not let history repeat itself this time around, because we won’t get a second chance for this issue. We can learn from history, and start conserving more land and forests like Theodore Roosevelt did, and keep large companies in check to make sure they aren’t being too wasteful. We can also improve upon what they did back then, and come up with new ways to be conservative, from doing things like using reusable grocery bags to creating cars that use no gas at all. We do have a lot of wasteful thinking going on today, but if we all put our heads together and improve our consumption habits drastically, the earth will stay safe, and sustainable, for many years to come.



Sites Used:
Library of Congress
Theodore Roosevelt Association
San Diego University History Server
The Good Human
The Story of Stuff