As a high school student, I do not know what I should do. I do not have status and I do not have the motivation or belief that I can make change globally or nationally. However, I am going to do my part.
I do not want to ignore issues (Genocide, China vs. US, poverty, hunger, etc), but I feel that I need to do my part to change what I feel needs to be changed. Right now, I lead the school's recycling program and I created it last year because there was no recycling at school period. Inside, I know that recycling is a corporation's way to hide their secret intention-- they want people to consume. They want people to consume and then just recycle so people can feel good about themselves. So instead of telling people to stop consuming (which surely would be futile), big corporations are pushing people to recycle because it saves the environment. I am in a peculiar situation, but what should I do, stop recycling? No Way.
Though I am just a grain of sand that makes up a beach, if I am not doing my part, the beach would be missing that grain of sand. See what I mean?
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I understand what your saying about corporations, but that is just their way of making money out of a trend that is just now beginning. These days everyone is beginning to recycle and its becoming something "cool" to do and corporations are like "wow we can make some money doing this." The thing is that recycling will save the planet from many things. If we recycle, then the land fills won't fill up with a bunch of waste that can be reused; therefore creating less pollution. Also, recycling saves trees and rainforests. The more paper we recycle the less amount of trees we cut down, and the less amount of environment we destroy! Corporations are always going to do something sneaky, but its not worth losing our earth just to get back at nasty corporations!
I'm not going to disagree with you about corporations wanting us to consume, afterall, corporations are in it to make money and not to care or worry about the environment. But you're saying that people recycling to feel good about themselves and to get rid of guilt is a bad thing. Recycling isn't suppose to make us feel bad. Why can't we cleanse our soul while we're cleansing the earth? and who really cares about the reasons they're recycling for as long as they are recycling?
You have a point. However, I know that some people and some families, they purchase tons and tons of one-use water bottles and they recycle 100% of them. It is a good thing that they are recycling because they are helping reduce the need for natural resources and money for transportation.
However, what if instead of buying so many water bottles and just buy one Nalgea bottle and reuse it. This way, we spend less money and it takes significantly less money to transport all those bottles from the home to the recycling center and everywhere else.
I just propose that people consume less, because that's the only way to save the environment. Recycling is supposed to make us feel bad if we are the ones who are purchasing tons of material that we end up wasting and then just deciding to recycle it because it's not as simple as just putting the recyclable into the bin and then the net cost becomes zero.
-zEro