Disposable

Filed under: Dharma

It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a shore, buy it, and bring it home; is considered less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.
-via TreeHugger

Mass production of disposable products for our convenience is the norm of the times. The more a society progresses the more the usage of disposable products. Look around you, probably 80% of products you use are the disposable kind. So, if we are waiting around for someone to solve environmental issues for us, then it’s not likely to happen. The problem is not someone else but us, unless we change our ways, the problems which have resulted from our desire for conveniences are not going away any time soon.

Each one of us could take a minute, review our dependency on disposable products, and cut back. Something as simple as washing and reusing a spoon can go along way. But remember karma, when we change our ways, it will impact things both in a good and a bad way. So if today we all stop using disposable spoons, then naturally, industries which produce these products will go out of business, people will lose jobs, and there will economic and social impacts. So when people say wash a spoon and reuse it, the impact of that action, in the big picture, is not as simple as it looks.

Another thing I have noticed is we sometimes justify use of disposable products by using recycling as an excuse. Well, when you get a chance, go to a landfill near you, and you will get a good idea of how much recycling actually goes on.

If you want to make a difference, make changes to your dependency on disposable products today, and show others that they can do it too.