[SustainableTompkins] Trash issues

[Andrew B Goodell]

I need to disagree. Everyone needs to be conscious of their waste,
regardless of their wealth and country. I've been to other countries, and
for example Madagascar is a third world country, and the beaches there are
littered with trash. Just because people don't live like Americans doesn't
mean they aren't producing more trash then they should. Let's not idealize
those with non-American lifestyles. At least they have a lot less trash
there, but their system is worse than ours and leads to trash piling up on
the streets and beaches. I think we've all seen pics/videos of people in
other countries going to the huge dump piles for their livelihood, and those
piles wouldn't exist if millions of people there weren't throwing out more
than they needed to.  

In the end, we all need to stop consuming things that are disposable. It's
terrible that the American/European culture is to buy things that are
purposefully made to be thrown out in weeks/months/years. 


Andy Goodell
(603) 831-0356

-----Original Message-----
From: sustainabletompkins-bounces at lists.mutualaid.org
[mailto:sustainabletompkins-bounces at lists.mutualaid.org] On Behalf Of
geoplan57 at aim.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:40 AM
To: sustainabletompkins at lists.mutualaid.org
Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] Pacific Trash Vortex, Vol 22, Issue 23



With all due respect, 6 billion people do not have to contemplate the impact
of their waste stream on the environment, only about 300 million Americans
and about 300 million Europeans have too.? The vast majority of the world's
population, 4?to 5 billion people or more people, do not generate more that
a few pound of garbage per person per year each, if that.

Only a tiny portion of the world's population lives the "American Way," and
has the discretion to consume, simply because they can consume, then
generate huge mountains of garbage.

We Americans have to stop being Amero-centric and stop projecting our
immmorally wasteful standard of living and lifestyle as the norm.? We are
the aberration, not the norm.? 

We need to redefine?what represents a "high"?standard of living .? Indeed,
we?need to define sustainability as being something beyond sustaining the
American standard of living, because 99% of what I read or hear about
"sustainability," from Al Gore on down, from hybrid cars?to solar hot water
heaters on?3,000 s.f. houses out in the middle of nowhere, is focused on
sustaining our lifestyle, not the environment.





George Frantz?


George R. Frantz
George R. Frantz & Associates
604 Cliff Street
Ithaca, New York 14850
(607) 256-9310





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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:35:21 -0400
From: "Andy Bailey Goodell" <goodella at hartwick.edu>
Subject: [SustainableTompkins] Pacific Trash Vortex
To: "'Sustainable Tompkins County listserv'"
    <sustainabletompkins at lists.mutualaid.org>
Message-ID: <001901c8142a$492c96a0$8102a8c0 at hartwick.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset="us-ascii"

Re: the "Pacific Trash Vortex"

This link
(http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashing-our-oceans/oce
an_pollution_animation) shows a decent animation showing where all this ends
up. It's amazing when you realize what "throwing out" actually means. Either
it goes into some capped landfill where it will almost never decompose, or
in this case it goes out to sea. The day I truly understood what happens to
trash (i.e. it doesn't just "go away!"), I stopped buying anything thought
of as disposable. I read an article in the magazine called GOOD about
someone doing a 'trash audit' to document how much trash they go through
each week. They took a picture of it for 52 weeks, but they weren't throwing
out much to begin with, so the reduction I was expecting to see didn't show
well. Now if only 6 billion people realized it...

Andy Goodell
(603) 831-0356



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