PhRT –
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| Tell me again how bad it is. |
Sometimes I think I am too much of an empath to work in
sustainability.
I get overwhelmed by the
immensity of the issues, and the lack of concern from society.
When reading about waste, I often think about
the years I spent traveling overseas.
These issues seemed to make more sense.
Maybe it was because I was seeing the problems from the view of the
people who struggle to meet their basic needs and therefore, their behavior
reflects this and there are fewer choices to actually be made.
It is just the way life is.
Flash forward to the more recent times in the
United States, and the things that people do are much more about choice and
reflect their own values (or lack thereof).
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| A small community in rural Ecuador. |
Let me think of a concrete example.
In a very small coastal town called Puerto El
Morro on the edge of the country of Ecuador, people live in poverty yet,
because of the poverty, they see value in things others may not see as
valuable. They use rocks to smash plantains to serve with a lunch of rice and
shrimp.
The shrimp are from the river running
by the town.
The food is local by
necessity, but it is sustainable and healthy.
There are walls built from 2 liter bottles because, well, Coca-Cola has
reached every corner of the globe.
If
those bottle can be used, the people are happy to use them instead of throw
them out. Milk and water are sold in bags, which is surely less plastic that a
gallon jug.
Also, most grocery plastic
bags are used and reused.
The dumps, for
example, near Cali, Colombia, are a haven for the poor to find their food and
other items still usable in some way.
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| A typical home near the coast of Ecuador. |
Now, that brings us to one of Professor Culhane’s videos
about the Zabaleen people in Egypt (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kzQCmBspNZo)
who are thought to be unholy because of how they pick through, process and use
the trash thrown away by their neighbors in the nearby cities. As mentioned in
the video, I would certainly agree that we should be thankful to these people
instead of viewing them as dirty.
And
why do we glorify the kind of wasteful, materialistic, throw-away culture that
we subscribe to so often in the United States?
I wish there were no shame in using trash that would otherwise pollute
the environment, and I wish there WERE shame in tossing trash like our society
does without regard to where it will end up.
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| A puppy near a trash pile, rural Ecuador. |
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| A life close to nature in rural Guatemala. |
Our society has it all backwards.
The video “Natural Capitalism (taking natural
capital into account)” (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Cq7Yn5pUJ3A)
explains that Natural Capitalism models
nature, a term called “biomimicry” (Sustainability Illustrated, 2016). Everything
depends on the environment; both society and the economy. So why would we NOT put our natural resources
as the highest priority to respect and manage?
As the paper titled “The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual
economic growth” states, “Such high-entropy matter depletes finite stocks of
ecosystem services provided by the ecosphere, hence are incompatible with the
long-term growth in the material scale of the economic process.” (Romeiro &
Earp, 2012). The very concept of exponential growth is not modeled by nature. Exponential
growth is supported by human greed and the idea that more and more and more is
somehow better. But it’s not. Nature
teaches us that
balance is
important. Matter
changing forms into new life is important.
Circular
systems are important. We have so
much to learn from nature, if we could just listen.
Sources:
Romeiro, A. R. & S´a
Earp, H. N. (2012). The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic
growth. Institute of Economics. Brazil.
Sustainability Illustrated (2016). Cod fish and natural capitalism—biomimicry.
Youtube.
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