| Link here |
My morning routine consists of eating an apple on to go. Seemingly no trash involved, right? Wrong. I am faced ever day with the moral question of whether to throw my apple's core into the trash, only to be transferred to some far-away pit of garbage we call landfills, or to simply toss it in a nearby patch of trees in the hope that a lucky squirrel or bird will have a nice lunch. Which one would the true environmentalist choose? In striving to be a knowledgable and cultured person conscious of my choices and their impacts, this is a dilemma that I am torn on.
So how biodegradable really is my apple core? Right before I toss my apple out the car window or just off the walking path, I convince myself that it is made up of organic matter, making it harmless to the Earth. Yet the thought of littering persists. In reality, the core probably gets kicked around for a while, never really disintegrating into the ground. I urge you to consider every item of trash that you throw out. What will be its affect in the long-term, in the grand scheme of things?
I’ll be honest when admitting that such thought never crossed my mind until the day I read your exposition. It’s a shocking realization to say the least - that such a mundane action as throwing away a fruit can harbor such environmental consequences, a fact that is so easily forgotten by society. It doesn’t help that society has integrate within our own senses of morality that any form of “littering” is bad, providing a mental restriction that, ironically, prevents us from pursuing what is right.
ReplyDeleteYour post brought about the important question of who to follow - yourself or society - and to remember that each decision a personage makes harbors some implications towards another, whether it be human, animal, or environment.
I try to not throw things away like that but I've always done that just because I was told to do so and that became a habit. Your perspective really made understand why that is and the reason as to why your parents will tell you "throw your thrash away in the thrash", Parents don't go on telling their children "just throw it wherever", or at least I hope they don't. I love how you mentioned people's mentality that "it won't matter it's just an apple core" but the thing is that it does matter especially when everyone else has that mentality and it's on a global scale. This totally brings us back to the Tragedy of the commons.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, we used to eat lunch by grass where if a piece of lettuce or something fell from my salad, I wouldn't care because I knew it wouldn't necessarily be harmful to the environment like it would if i left behind the plastic container the salad came in. But, I honestly never really thought about purposely tossing apple cores to the environment instead of in a trash can because I was just always taught to throw things in the trash can, and now next time I eat an apple, I'll probably be wondering the same thing. I definitely am one that advocates not littering, but that's with things like plastic that aren't biodegradable. I think you brought up a really good point and you changed my perspective about what's really considered "litter".
ReplyDelete