Blog 5

January 13, 2014

Today in class we discussed Samantha’s MacBride book, Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. We read the first three chapters in the weekend. MacBride does an excellent job in articulating her argument. I felt like it was very informational about the topics she discussed but also conveyed her argument very well. Moreover, MacBride gives a very economical and business standpoints to her argument, which I think strengthen her argument.

One of the things that stuck out to me in the chapter read so far was the amount of textile and glass wasting occurs in the United States. According to Mcbride, “In the contemporary United States, comparable tonnages of glass (7.2 million tons) and textiles (8.5 million tons) are disposed each year as municipal solid waste, destined for landfill or incinerators (MacBride 25). This quote shocked me and infact I highlighted this quote and have a bunch of exclamation marks around it! First of all it absolutely aggravates me that we spend so much on glass. In reality glass is just co

mplete waste and we can get rid of it or at least reduce our usage. We can stop buying glass containers for food storage or any at all. There are plenty of reusable items that can help run a household very smoothly.

When I read about the textiles waste, I was very ashamed. I am a hoarder when it comes to clothes. I will constantly buy new clothes almost every month. Although, I encourage myself to limit myself in buying clothes where I spent minimum only $30.00 dollars. I often times find myself sometimes throwing out clothes that I possibly have worn only once or just keep it because “it may come back in fashion.” I understand I have an issue and that is one of things I really hope on working on.

This leads to my last point that besides just working on myself I would I also make a change at DePauw, and I know things do not happen overnight but I do try my best. I really hope this campus project happens. I just do not want make signs and put posters up, but educate people on these important environmental issues. The reason I encourage this so much is because I was once someone who did not know much about how serious these problems are, and I think once they know they will be more encouraged to do it.