How Can America Be Less Wasteful? Free Essay on Environmental Issues

As a nation, the U.S. is generating a lot of garbage and no effective measures have been advanced to deal with it. Consumerism has changed the once-conservative society into a throw-away society; one that evokes the essential concept of excessive proliferation and consumption of short-lived or disposable products. The principle issue with this throw-away culture is that customers effortlessly give in to the advertisements surrounding them. Americans are prepared to be wasteful buyers taking into account the messages they receive daily. Americans live under a materialistic economy that strives to create, advance, and maintain the estimations of the materialist American system. Individuals are prepared to dependably pursue more, however this forward mindset regularly leaves them ignorant of the things they possess. For this reason, it is it's essential to battle the throw-away mindset of striving for more, needing more, in return for acknowledgement and appreciation of immediate possessions, hence making America less wasteful. This involves the 3 Rs approach of waste management; namely, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

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Reduce

This involves encouraging individuals to reduce the number of things they purchase, including food. This is one of most considerable options of dealing with throw-away culture. The key is having people to just buy merchandise that they require and for the right price. If America never produce end products in any case, there is no need to concentrate raw materials, generate products without any preparation, think of transportation materials, use extra resources for delivery, and after that devise approaches to discard them. Every individual adds to the problem of waste management. If every family unit reduces its waste output, be it food or other products, the issue will be decreased (Jensen, Americas). One can begin by dissecting what you discard and what merchandise is required at home. There a number of approaches of reducing waste that can be introduced.

First it is important to choose products that are needed, not wanted. Americans have a tendency of upgrading their electronics often so as to keep up with the latest technology or design. However, in so doing they are likely to water their finances and unnecessarily lead to the waste of natural resources. Secondly, it is important to shop for high-quality products. Though one may be required to pay more, high-quality products often last long and perform better and have few problems as opposed to low-quality products. The third approach is avoiding or making use of minimum packaging. Packaging materials such as boxes, plastic bags or wrappers often end up in dumpsites (Chawla and Rajaram 270). Therefore, Americans should be encouraged to carry shopping bags and to use reusable and recyclable paper bags rather than plastic bags since they decompose swiftly (Abdul-Rahman and Wright 2). Lastly, there is need to buy local products since it would not only boost the local economy but it would also minimize the negative environmental effects resulting from product distribution or delivery.

Reuse

Possibly being wasteful makes numerous individuals uncomfortable. However the vast majority of American keep on wasting since they cannot consider anything better to do with products they feel outdated such as a year ago's draperies that are too short. They are cultured to consider things that are old, vacant, worn, broken, monstrous, or damaged as pointless, so they discard them without much contemplating about the results. Most Americans purchase much more than they can utilize successfully, as confirmed by swelling carports and storage rooms. The procedure of reusing begins with the supposition that the utilized materials that flow through human lives may be an asset as opposed to waste. The waste produced by humans, all things considered, is subjective depending on each person's preferences (Abdul-Rahman and Wright 3). One individual's waste is someone else's fortune. On the off chance that people truly take a gander at things they are discarding, they can figure out how to consider them to be materials that can be reused to tackle daily issues and fulfill ordinary needs. The greater part of humanity, be that as it may, has not begun making use of the assets in our refuse. When individuals have decided to use rubbish for positive uses, they can start to conceptualize and generate thoughts. The idea of reuse saves cash, moderates assets, and fulfills the human inclination to be inventive.

Recycle

Lastly, it is important to recycle use products if America were to minimize is wastefulness. Apart from minimizing the magnitude of waste generated, recycling advances an industry. Secondly recycling creates job opportunities; recycling of thousands of tons of waste products would create a significantly high number of jobs as opposed to land filling or waste disposal. Lastly, recycling reduces or helps avoid waste disposal costs. It conserves natural resource and protects the environment while lowering the energy consumption and taxes; hence resulting in a cleaner and healthy environment (Kramer 7).

Some of the approaches to recycling include curb-side collections which require the separation of recyclables from non-recyclables by consumers. Secondly drop-off centers may be used; allowing for individuals to drop used products such as plastic, metal, paper, and glass as a certain drop-off center. Lastly, buy-back centers may be established to buy recyclable but disposable products from individuals (Hung, Wang and Shammas 595)

In conclusion, the 3 Rs strategy forms a solid approach to making America less wasteful. It nurtures better and effective management of waste. This would help battling the prevalent throw-away mindset of desiring for more, needing more, while encouraging the appreciation and acknowledgement and appreciation of what is in hand, hence making America less wasteful.

Works Cited

Abdul-Rahman, Fahzy, and Susan Wright. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Alternatives for Waste Management. NM State University, Cooperative Extension Service, 2014.

Chawla, Kavin Singh, and Vasudevan Raj Rajaram. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." Integration of Nature and Technology for Smart Cities. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 269-282.

Hung, Yung-Tse, Lawrence K. Wang, and Nazih K. Shammas. Handbook of Environment & Waste Management. New Jersey: World Scientific, 2014. Internet resource.

Jensen, Brennen. "America's Food Waste Problem Is Bigger than You Think." The Hub. John Hopkins Magazine, Fall 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.

Kramer, Kem-Laurin. User Experience in the Age of Sustainability: A Practitioner's Blueprint. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2012. Print.