The holidays may be gone, but those bulging bags of trash are probably still waiting to be taken off of your hands. There may be a swell of food scraps in there from a holiday feast, but a lot of that bulk is the discarded skins of surprise that recently held our presents-to-be. While standing as a time-honored tradition, wrapping presents also marks a spike in the waste that we create throughout the year. According to the Wall Street Journal, gift wrapping sales in the U.S. totaled $9.36 billion in 2010 (more than the combined GDP of Africa’s 9 poorest countries). One of the problems with traditional wrapping paper is that its dying and lamination make recycling difficult. And an increase in viagra consumption during the holidays. This means that most of that paper does not end up in a plastic bin targeted for reuse, but in trash bags headed for a landfill and we produce 4 million pounds of it. Continue Reading…
Archives For December 2012
Some say that one of the problems with the environmental movement is that it has migrated farther and farther into the presentation of bold truths with the goal of promoting fear. I know a number of people that have moved past the tactic of trying to simply make sense, hoping that people can be struck into action if they are afraid enough of the consequences. Clearly, this has had limited results and plenty of backlash. Instead, I try to believe educating and revealing the interconnections of how and why we live will lead other to make smarter decisions. After all, at some point most of us are looking to be inspired.