Wasteful - by Sharon Flood Kasenberg

Wasteful

We are wasteful on our planet -
trash heaps to the sky.
Always buying and consuming
without knowing why.

Much we could re-use - recycle -
rather than just toss,
but we pile more on the scrap heap -
treasure becomes dross.

Water we can buy in bottles,
and you say to me
that you will not fill my bottle -
quench my thirst for free?

Food we do not think delicious
we just throw away -
decadence in first world lifestyle
always on display.

The technology we pay for
with our hard earned cash?
It's designed for obsolescence -
it is made to crash!

Nothing's made to last forever -
or that's what we hear.
All the things we've ever owned will
someday disappear...

Ploughed under a giant landfill,
buried in the sea,
out of sight - by us forgotten
for too easily.

But not so for our poor planet -
Earth cannot contain
all the waste that, though forgotten,
always will remain.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg - May 1, 2017


Over the past few years I've become a lot more aware of how wasteful we are as a society, and how much I carelessly toss in the garbage. I'm trying to put a lot more thought into what I buy and how I dispose of things I no longer need. Sadly establishing more conservative practices isn't easy in a disposable world.

We see an onslaught of consumerism and wastefulness all around us. Advertisements tell us to buy, buy, buy - regardless of whether we actually need. Garbage cans overflow with uneaten food at restaurants. Malls are full of aimless shoppers looking for "something"- a bargain to fill an empty spot in their lives. Once, after a shopping trip with a friend I asked her what she'd bought. Her reply astonished me,

"Oh - I bought a dress. I don't think it looks great on me, and it's not really what I wanted, but it's better than buying nothing at all!"

I really couldn't have disagreed more, but I kept myself from being too forceful about expressing my contrary opinion, lest I be accused of being a parsimonious prig. My approach to shopping has always been the opposite - I'd far rather come away empty handed than waste my money buying something that I don't really need - or at least really want. My closet already contains far too many items that are seldom worn, and I feel guilty admitting that. I'm trying to cull my closet more often, because the things I don't wear anymore will be appreciated by someone else.

I've always felt guilty about wasting food, which was seen as a sin in the family I was raised in. You took what you could eat, and by golly you finished it! A childhood filled with eating leftovers helped me develop a distaste for anything reheated (a lot of the meals I cook aren't that good the first time around) - but since my younger son (aka the family garbage disposal) left home I've made a more concerted effort to finish up the remains of previous suppers at lunchtime. I've also tried harder to plan use of leftovers in advance - yesterday's roast beef can be tomorrow's stroganoff, right? Thinking this way doesn't come easily to me, but I'm getting better at it. (Living in a town with no grocery store provides a bit more incentive to purchase groceries carefully and use up every scrap!)

One of my pet peeves is water bottles. I'm trying hard to not buy them anymore. Every time I head out the door for the day I fill a reusable container for the road. My big dilemma becomes how to get refills when I've finished the water I packed. Water filling stations are few and far between, as are drinking fountains, and few public bathrooms have actual taps with cold water, as opposed to weird sprinkler things or motion activated faucets that provide lukewarm water and turn off when you position a bottle under them. If you ask for tap water at a fast food place they'll give you the smallest cup they can find. (One sub shop actually gave me a Dixie cup!). Likewise, sit down restaurants have gotten stingy with their water. Many seem oddly willing to keep the "free" pop refills coming, but reluctant to offer to refill for my water glass - I usually have to ask for more. The only conclusion I can find is that these places are a bit annoyed that I don't want to pay for a beverage. They'd rather see me sucking in empty calories (and excessive aeration) with the meal I've purchased than provide free drinking water from their tap.

Frankly, I resent having to pay money for bottled water - especially when I know that some of it is pulled out of the ground a half hour from here. These companies pay pennies for mega-gallons, and sell our resource back to us for a dollar (or two dollars) for each 500 ml bottle. Most bottled water is less pure that what we get out of our taps, and the bottles will pollute our land, our lakes and our oceans. Sure, the bottles can be recycled, but how many actually are? Why bother paying for, and recycling, bottles of a beverage that we can get out of our taps for free? Sheesh - it's not like there aren't plenty of other plastic things that we buy and need to try and recycle - like excessive packaging - and electronic components....

When I complained a few years back about how quickly electronics became outdated or wore out, my older son introduced me to the concept of planned obsolescence. Things are made quickly and cheaply now, and therefore have a short shelf life (or desk life, or TV stand life...) so that we'll have to repurchase them in a few years. Why produce quality when you can mass produce a great quantity of mediocre to downright crappy products that people will have to keep on buying? Our first television was a wedding gift from my father-in-law. We've been married almost twenty-nine years, and it still works! A few years ago we went shopping for a flat screen television, but when the salesman told us we could only expect to get - on average - six years out of our purchase we decided to hold off. Likewise, we had our first computer for a looong time, and just kept adding new components to it. But now? No such luck - you have to replace the whole thing every few years! Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?

I know I run the risk of sounding like an old crank when I say it, but I miss the days of cars and kitchen appliances that routinely lasted for more than a decade. Think back to your childhood. How many times did your mother replace her fridge or stove? I'm betting that if you're close to my age you've bought three fridges for every one that your mother owned.

My point is this - we waste without thinking about it. We spend without thought and waste a lot of what we buy. We need to come up with better purchasing strategies and better ways of disposing of our trash. We need to hold companies accountable for what they produce. We need to demand quality more often. If I get better quality I will buy less. If I buy less, I'll waste less. I understand that every business wants to make money, but there's a truth out there that's more important than any bottom line.

 If our planet is taken care of, we all profit.

Maybe if we can all learn to live more frugally, and make more careful purchases, this crazy downward spiral of buying and trashing will stop before Earth becomes a barren, polluted wasteland.

Waste not.