A Cleaner Dose of Air

After a weeks worth of counting and maintaining a personal account of the amount of trash thrown away, I was shocked and dismayed at the amount of trash I throw away on a daily basis. This exercise certainly has made me a lot more aware of the excess amount of trash that I throw away into the garbage, and, in addition, how I rarely use the recycle bin to throw away most of my paper or plastic products. Moreover, even before the exercise was done, I never really realized how much trash I threw away daily and how I rarely practice any sort of sustainable behavior before. It was so clear in my mind that it was okay to throw away anything because once I was done with something as small as a paper cup, I thought that such an item had nothing more to give and thus deserved to be terminated in the nearest trash bin. I was clearly mistaken. After going through with the exercise, and after reading Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity, a book discussing the significant benefits of practicing sustainable behavior and limiting the amount of excess waste on a daily basis, I realized that many products I, and many other people, take for granted by simply throwing away in the garbage have a much more significant effect on the outcome of the world in the future.

This exercise made me realize many significant areas of wastefulness I didn't see before. As seen with my attached personal trash inventory, the main areas of wastefulness on my behalf can be seen in the area involving paper. Paper seems to be the largest area of wastefulness seen in the chart, with a total of 16,740 sq. inches wasted from adding napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, computer paper, and notebook paper all together. After calculating the sum, I was very much surprised as to how much paper I waste daily, and also how much waste accumulates over time. In addition, such waste can also reflect many values and ethics I hold dearly while I was growing up, primarily personal, familial, and cultural. As a small boy, I grew up in a family that considered paper a prime necessity for school and everyday affairs. My father, for example, largely influenced me when he used lots and lots and lots of paper for his everyday affairs with his work in chemical engineering. He would stay up all night and day working and writing down lots of numbers on almost hundreds and hundreds of paper. After my dad would finish his work, he would take literally boxes full of the paper he didn't need anymore and throw all the boxes full of paper into the garbage disposal. When I was doing homework for math, science, or writing essays, my dad would always tell me, "Never think that you never need paper, paper is everything for school, use as much as you want and can and never waste an ounce of an idea in that mind of yours". Granted, my dad shouldn't be seen as some ignorant, bad man for his un-sustainable encouragement. In fact, my dad is my best friend and my number one role model in life. However, even at that age and while I was growing up, I never really considered a "wasteful" practice of throwing away paper. I thought it was good to throw away paper and never really reflected how much I was contributing to the degradation of the land and of the world. Using paper for everyday activities in school and for remedial tasks at home was such a familial and personal value that I always considered it good to waste paper because it showed that I was using every bit of my ideas and knowledge on paper and not wasting what I left in my mind. I never really considered the effects of wasting so much paper because throughout my childhood, and even now, I was always taught to use as much paper as I can to store my ideas and clearly write down the answers that were needed for all my school work.

I think my wasteful practices of throwing away large amounts of paper can reflect the larger society's pattern of throwing away resources without any second thought. As I used to think while I grew up, people think that such natural resources are so abundant on the earth that even simple necessities like toilet paper, or computer paper, or any other paper product can never run out and are at limitless supply. People, especially in America, are used to thinking that we live in a world where any natural resource that is needed can be taken without any sustainable practice. An example can be seen with a Starbucks coffee cup. Once a person is done with it, they never really have the time to stop and consider the damage they cause by wasting and throwing away the cup into the garbage instead of throwing it away in recycling. The person can naturally assume that one cup wasted won't mean the sudden end of the natural source of Starbucks cups. That is true in one sense, but if you multiply that practice by like a billion plus people throughout the world, then we can safely assume that such practices are indeed a danger to the natural environmental order and damaging to the sustainable practices of saving the natural resources. In addition, such thinking can reflect the thoughts expressed in the book Radical Simplicity, in which Merkel describes the many ways we can preserve and practice sustainable living. One such comparison can be seen when Merkel describes the sustainable behavior of the Indian village of Kerala. There, Merkel describes, people use the natural resources as sustainably as possible. From making shirts, to making local wooden products from coconuts, Merkel describes how the people in the village never consume more or less than is needed, but only enough to provide for all the people in a given day. Moreover, the people in Kerala provide food and other products by using the earth in the most eco-friendly way as possible; without huge carbon emitting machines or large amounts of pesticides that both ruin the atmosphere and the health of the people. The people in Kerala have learned through familial and cultural customs that providing the optimal amount of food and other products through sustainable practices can be a better source of living than by over use and living in excess. If only the people in America can take a trip to Kerala and witness the wonder that is truly being shown there, I think people in America, and the world as a whole, have a much brighter future if we all collectively start practicing more sustainable and environmentally friendly actions in order for the world to breath a cleaner dose of air.

	napkins 5" x 8"	paper towels 8" x 26"	toilet paper 4" x 30"	computer paper 8" x 11"	notebook paper 8" x 11"
Tuesday 3/30/10	5 x 40 = 200 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	5 x 120 = 600 sq. inches	32 x 88 = 2816 sq. inches	27 x 88 = 2376 sq. inches
Wednesday 3/31/10	6 x 40 = 240 sq. inches	1 x 208 = 208 sq inches	6 x 120 = 720 sq. inches	11 x 88 = 968 sq. inches	11x 88 = 968 sq. inches
thursday 4/1/10	4 x 40 = 160 sq. inches	3 x 208 = 624 sq. inches	4 x 120 = 480 sq. inches	5 x 88 = 440 sq. inches	12 x 88 = 1056 sq. inches
Friday 4/2/10	7 x 40 = 280 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	5 x 120 = 600 sq. inches	3 x 88 = 264 sq. inches	3 x 88 = 264 sq. inches
Saturday 4/3/10	3 x 40 = 120 sq. inches	2 x 208 = 416 sq. inches	3 x 120 = 360 sq. inches	5 x 88 = 440 sq. inches	2 x 88 = 176 sq. inches
Sunday 4/4/10	5 x 40 = 200 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	4 x 120 = 480 sq. inches	6 x 88 = 528 sq. inches	0 x 88 = 0 sq. inches
Monday 4/5/10	8 x 40 = 320 sq. inches	1 x 208 = 208 sq. inches	2 x 120 = 240 sq. inches	0 x 88 = 0 sq. inches	1 x 88 = 88 sq. inches
Total	1420 sq. inches	1456 sq. inches	3480 sq. inches	5456 sq. inches	4928 sq. inches