No, actually, I don't. I'll just have to keep trying harder, that's all. What am I talking about? My uphill struggle to educate my fellow Americans about the value and absolute necessity of caring for their environment.
I'm not saying that the UK is perfect, far from it, but Americans are quite frankly HUGE consumers and TERRIBLE at recycling. I can only speak of my own personal experience since I've lived here, but it shocks me on an almost constant basis how little thought most people here give to how many things they use once then throw away. They have little thought to where it all ends up, and at what cost to the environment.
To me it is unthinkable to throw a can, plastic bottle or paper cup into the bin, knowing it will add to the already rapidly filling landfill, when it could just as easily be recycled. Yet this is exactly what most people here do. I've seen people at work use a paper plate for their lunch and throw it away, repeating the process every day. I've seen people at parties using plastic plates and cutlery, then throwing it away when they could have washed and reused it for the next party.
When I first got this job, couriers would regularly deliver 30 or more flyers advertising property for sale. A flyer would be put into each agent's mailbox in the office, the rest would be thrown away. Most of the agents would then glance at the flyer and this too would then be thrown away. So I emailed the source of each flyer and asked them to send them to me by email so that I could forward them on to all our agents, saving them time and money, and saving paper and ink. Nobody objected, everyone agreed this was a brilliant idea, yet nobody else had come up with it before.
I also brought in a box for staff members to put recyclables in. We have a recycling bin at home, and as there are only two of us and it's a huge bin, there is usually room for more. So on a Friday I take home the recycling from work and put it in our recycling bin. Again, not much effort required, but it makes me feel better.
So last week when me and Perfect Husband were doing our shopping in Walmart, I took a break from my usual hobby of snapping pictures of weirdly dressed people and posting them on Facebook, and bought a 12 piece Dinner Set. It cost $12 and consists of 4 each of bowls, small and large plates. I brought it into work this morning, for everyone here to use, in an attempt to wean them off their use once and throw away habit.
One of my colleagues told the boss that I had brought it in to stop people using paper plates; his comment was "oh do we need to buy a dishwasher then?" to which I replied "no, we each just wash what we use."
This was what I believe the younger generation would call a Facepalm moment- I mean, really?? I despair of these bloody stupid, thoughtless people, I really do! Why am I bothering? Because our planet needs me to that's why. And there are millions more like me, and hopefully we will eventually educate everyone else to think more and be more careful.
And, in the words of that wise and eminent sage, Miley Cyrus "We can't stop....and we won't stop....."
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