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Greenwashing - unless we start buying less stuff our recycling becomes someone else's pollution?
Monday, 04 May 2009 19:44
Is household recycling conservation?
The word conservation is often used or misused - when what we often mean is preservation.
Conservation is usually used in reference to animals, plants or historical monuments and is seldom used in its wider context - that is to conserve or in another way - not to waste.
In our everyday lives household recycling is as close as we generally get to conservation but there's increasing evidence that it's not all its cracked up to be. I still assiduously recycle but am becoming increasingly concerned that it’s just a sop and misses the essence of conserving the world’s limited resources.
Recent media exposes indicate we are being conned by politicians who want to appear to be doing something eco-friendly but don't really care if it is real. There are stories of carefully recycled household waste being dumped in landfill or even worse being transported to third world countries and dumped there.
Recycling our tins, bottles and paper is all well and good but the big recycling issue is our throw away consumer society where every modern resource and household product we buy has a prodigious impact on the environment.
So what are we complicit with when we buy or replace a mobile phone (or any other gadget)? There's habitat destruction, land degradation due to mining, which often involves throwing indigenous people off their traditional land, taking away their livelihood, destroying forests, polluting rivers & watercourses. Then there’s the massive energy consumption - with more mining or drilling for oil - repeating the above but with added aerial pollution.
Conservation is sometimes conceived of as a relatively esoteric concept - the prerogative of scientists, experts or those fortunate enough to be able to travel to one of the world's exotic places. Or sometimes, in a more derogatory sense, the prerogative of fanatical tree huggers or obsessed animal lovers. But its not - every time we buy a pointless new hi-tech gadget, made from toxic heavy metals and plastics, we are complicit in.
In the current economic meltdown its constantly being said that it's a tragedy that people have to make do and mend and can't afford to constantly buy new things.
Isn't it awful that we are being forced to be less wasteful and not buy as many unnecessary consumer goods?
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