You ever feel like that? I'm surely not talking about someone sick, or infirm, or handicapped - no, no, no!! Nothing like that. I'm talking about those people who don't give a crap outside their own little circle and their own well-being. People who can't think beyond their own nose. The entitled. Those who don't think twice about the double-plastic-bag even though the rest of us are all screaming at the tops of our lungs about it. With their plastic bottles and nary a second thought. No, nary a first thought. Do those people ever get to you?
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| Imagine if we had listened then, where we would be now. |
I know, I know, I need to move to where people are less all about themselves... and their cars and hair and clothes and.... blah. What's the answer? Will people ever change? Can we change them? Do we try? Do we just hang around like-minded people instead? That can't be right, then we wouldn't have any impact on those around us. It has to be a balance. We need to be able to run to our groups, I guess, when the rest of them get to be too much. Balance.
I feel like we really really lack balance these days. It's like... it's like it's all or nothing. Full force. Full speed. Full time. I'm not sure what the point to that is. Again, if we aren't enjoying the ride, why are we on it?
Let's start asking random people that very question. When someone is whiny or complainy or just plain miserable to be around - I mean, constantly, not when someone is just having a bad day - let's ask that! Oh, hell, let's just ask it all the time! MAYBE - and I know this is quite a stretch here - maybe people will stop to think. Just a little bit.
It's a start. Even if it just makes ME a little less crazy. Ha.
I had to chuckle when I saw the old crying Indian ad from the 70's. Did you know that the whole "Keep America Beautiful" ad campaign was actually funded and run by the bottling industry? The major message of the campaign was that litter was caused by individual people being irresponsible, rather than by an industry that filled the world with single use disposable containers.
ReplyDeleteKAB spent much of its efforts fighting "bottle bills" that required a deposit on containers like cans and bottles. Here's some more history if you're interested: http://toolkit.bottlebill.org/opposition/KABhistory.htm
It's sort of sad to me how we've all bought the message hook, line and sinker. Like pollution is all "our fault" because we make bad choices. We just accept it and fail to see that industry has fought long and hard to free itself from any responsibility for the waste it creates. Imagine how different things would look if every "disposable" container and piece of packaging out there had a 5 cent deposit on it.
There's actually a whole movement working to make companies take responsibility for the costs of dealing with the waste they create, both in terms of packaging and the disposal/recycling of their products at the end of their useful life. Here's more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility
I guess I just think that there's no way we're ever gonna be able to solve our environmental problems by leaving them up to the decisions of millions of individual people. Especially when the whole system is set up to make responsible decision making so hard... like trying to find ranch dressing in a glass bottle. If we had decent laws and regulations in place, every brand would come in a glass bottle with a deposit on it, and they'd all get washed and re-used instead of tossed or recycled.
I guess I just think that while it's great and important to encourage people to make better choices, no amount of "personal responsibility" can ever make up for a system that has irresponsibility built into it's very fiber.
Not sure where that leaves us, but I think voting for people who will work towards better government regulations would be a good start.
Of COURSE it was a marketing campaign. Isn't everything? But it DID get people thinking, and it WAS true. And yes, we just mentioned on my radio show yesterday about making companies take responsibility.
DeleteThen again, there is a big deposit on bottles etc here in CA, and no one cares much... except the homeless who go through all the recycling bins to pull out what no one cared to bother about. Bottom line, and I think you agree with this: we DO make bad decisions. As we said in my previous post. We DO need regulations, because we cannot be trusted.