The throw away culture

(Originally an email, 2008-01-04. Slightly edited for clarity.)

I'm sure you've already heard lots on the pacific garbage patch. It has even been featured on the local TV news, meaning it has penetrated to the deepest levels of the otherwise uninformed. Still, here are some articles and pictures that lend details to the story.
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm
http://www.conservationinstitute.org/images/rubbish_in_river.jpg

The most spectacular part of all this is that these plastics only came into widespread use during the 20th century. The habits are less than 100 years old, and already the garbage may cover 1/4 of the ocean surface.

The problem arose quickly and while it can't be easily reversed, the root cause can be stopped almost entirely. And it can be done virtually overnight if everyone took the problem seriously. The rapid emergence of the throw-away culture has provided us disposable grocery bags, disposable flatware, cups, plates, bowls and napkins. It has caused us to wrap everything in low density polyethylene, pack everything in styrofoam, and design everything to break and be thrown away. San Francisco and New York have taken a crucial step in raising awareness of the problem by banning plastic grocery bags, but their ban is woefully inadequate; it doesn't even cover all the stores, just the major grocery chains. Now that people have taken notice, though, it's important to take the next step. This isn't just a plastic problem, it's a garbage problem.

First, ban all plastic bags. All grocery bags, shopping bags, produce bags, ziploc bags, trash bags, leaf bags, literally everything, no exceptions. Then phase out paper bags. Eventually, ban all disposable bags entirely. What will we carry our groceries in? Baskets, boxes, cloth bags, backpacks, whatever. Until well into the 20th century, we never knew we needed disposable bags. We'll forget about them in no time. In the meantime, I've vowed to never use a disposable bag again.

Second, ban plastic and styrofoam tableware, including at take out and fast food restaurants. This one is obvious but entrenched. For starters, they can migrate to biodegradable paper and starch products rather than styrofoam and plastic. Then they can ween their customers back to real, washable dishes and silverware like we always used to have.

What will we get our coffee in at Starbucks? If we're going to drink it there, a real coffee cup. If we're going to take it out, then either a coffee cup we brought from home, or one the store will sell to us if we don't yet have our own.

What will our burgers and fries and coke come in at Burger King? Your burger and fries will come on a plate, and they'll give you a tumbler instead of a paper cup (hardly any difference here, you already fill your own soda at most fast food joints).

What about if we want to eat in our cars? Have a seat and eat your meal in the restaurant. If your schedule is so busy that you can't find time to eat even fast food, you need to slow down and relax.

Third, gradually raise taxes on bottled water and canned/bottled soda, while also getting out the message to drink more tap water. When bottled water becomes prohibitively expensive, poor and middle class people will go back to drinking the free tap water they always used to. They'll also trade their Coke and Gatorade for tap water, which will not only help with the garbage problem but the obesity problem as well. Rich people will go on drinking Perrier and so on, but by the numbers they're a tiny fraction of the market, they're less likely to litter, and they're more likely to recycle. The fancy stuff is also generally sold in glass bottles, which take more energy to make but are overall less of a garbage problem.

Fourth, ban unnecessary packaging material. Here is a self-adjusting wrench, with and without packaging. Does a wrench need a package? Apply this question to every product on the shelves until only the bare essentials remain, such as food and medical packaging. Then convert to using more bulk bins and less individual packaging, while converting the remaining packaging to biodegradable or recyclable material.
http://www.toolspotting.net/images/blackanddecker_autowrench.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/01010001020201040020080103c45592f29e2366cbe200cfce.jpg

Fifth, make recycling free where it isn't already, increase container deposits steeply and set up many more exchange locations, help communities set up composting, and rather than fine litter offenders, make them serve their community service by picking up litter, working at a landfill, recycling center, or incinerator. A less punitive, more educational approach is better for a lot of reasons. Also, there should be much more automatic (and paid manual) sorting of garbage for metal, plastic, food waste, paper, and everything else that doesn't necessarily need to be thrown away. The state or trash company can sell the reclaimed waste for scrap, generate methane from it, or divert it to a recycling center as appropriate. Really, there is no excuse for burying anything, and landfill growth should approach zero. I'd be tempted to charge for remaining garbage by the pound, but that would just tempt people to dump illegally. Instead, garbage should be centrally sorted exhaustively by whatever methods make the most sense and 0% of it should end up buried in the ground. Once we slow and finally stop the growth of landfills, and once garbage processing techniques have become highly efficient and safe, we can begin excavating existing ones. Recycling all our old trash fixes the environmental problems old landfills continuously cause, like toxic seepage, and drastically slows the rate at which new mineral resources would have to be extracted by re-introducing vast quantities of recycled material that had been previously buried. I'd be willing to bet that a ton of old garbage is richer in recoverable metals than a ton of the ore it originally came from.

There are probably loads of other things that can be done, but the common theme here is each suggestion would actually save money and make life easier for people (or at least not make it any harder). We can all keep being lazy, live ridiculously comfortable lives, and keep more money in our pockets, all without generating the waste we currently do. It's just a matter of convincing everyone of these realities. Once more people realize it, we can go on to tackle other, tougher problems like energy and transportation. But those are for another day.

The biggest roadblocks to these changes are the companies that make disposable crap. All the bottled water makers would balk, as would the dixie cup people and the glad bag people and the ziploc people... lobbyists, what a pain. It's a vicious circle that as long as their products are on the shelf, people will keep buying them, and as long as they want to buy them, they'll stay on the shelf. I guess we'll have to try chipping away at the problem from all sides until there's a breakthrough.

(Don't discount the government. They're a large element and have incredible power to screw things up. See Vietnam, Iraq, etc. If you don't harness that power for good, it's going to either be wasted on pointless crap or be used to make things worse.)