A culture of excess is a culture of waste: an open letter
Tags: Garbage, Student Voice, Waste Management, Environmental Issues

My name is Thomas, and I am currently working my way through university in the field of wildlife biology. Today I deliver to you an open letter on the issues of garbage production. I fear for both my future as a wildlife biologist and more importantly as a citizen of Earth due to the problems created by the growing levels of waste across the planet. With this letter I hope to educate and inspire readers to do what they can to combat this issue. Thank you.

As some of you have discovered and more are about to realize, modern society has pushed onto us a culture of excess. In which having more is equated to being better. While this is not the primary topic of this piece, it is important to recognize as a contributing factor. The topic of this piece, and the problem at hand is the growing level of waste generated around the globe. This is a problem spurred almost entirely by the culture of excess I mentioned. What happens when an object we use reaches the end of its useable life? Most people probably throw it away without a second thought, but where does it go after that? Goods are no longer manufactured with the intent of lasting a lifetime, but instead with planned lifespan. In this letter, Im not going to ask you to overhaul your lifestyle, but instead to consider where your garbage goes, and how you should properly dispose of it.

Since 1960, the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States (EPA) has been publishing reports on the waste stream, including data and figures on nearly any garbage related statistic you can think of. Thing is, nearly every statistic they present is showing an upward trend. This isn’t a bad thing in all categories however, the EPA shows that more materials are being recycled than ever before and that more waste is being converted into energy through combustion, rather than entering a landfill. While these are great things, the biggest problem is that the overall generation of waste is increasing too. With the most recent data showing that over 290 million tons of waste was generated in 2018, the upward trend shows no signs of slowing down.

In order to minimize the damage to our planet there are small things everyone can do within their household or workplace. As an individual you can reduce waste entering the garbage stream by using reusable containers for food storage. Or try taking the time to double check whether a plastic can be recycled before throwing it into the garbage can versus the recycling bin. Personally, I have been choosing not to buy products coming in unnecessary packaging. If we as consumers can show that packaging isn’t needed for some products, then manufacturers can stop using it. However, there are big changes that require us to band together. In order to get changes made on larger scales, we must work together in order to elect officials that believe in this problem and want to do something about it.

I hope that by presenting this short letter I’ve caused you to think about what you can do in order to protect the future of our planet. I also suggest that you look further into the topic as I have only broached the surface of it here. Finally, I thank you for taking the time to read this and hope to have made an impact on your way of thinking.