Opinion: Ours is the most wasteful civilization in history. Here’s how to stop that
What if the looming calamities of climate change, plastic pollution, the energy crisis and our whole environmental doom-scroll are symptoms of just one malady and it’s something we actually can fix? That’s right, the planet is fighting a single archvillain: Waste. Americans live in the most wasteful civilization in history. … Waste is so deeply embedded in our economy, products and daily lives that it’s hard to see clearly, or to see at all. … How is it “normal” that 40% of what our industrial farm and food system produces ends up as garbage? … The average American throws out three times more trash today than in 1960. Pin much of that garbage growth on plastic waste, so pervasive now that tiny bits of it are in food, water, beer and even human hearts, lungs and newborn babies’ poop.
-Written by Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest book, “Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World,” will be published in April.