Masha Gerber
4/29/2015
Insuring Justice while Solving the Wicked Problems
of AGW
(Composting)
“Composting is a simple way to add nutrient-rich humus which fuels plant
growth and restores vitality to depleted soil. It's also free, easy to make and
good for the environment. Soil conditioner”
- WIKIPEDIA DEFINITION
Lately more and more places are now coming up with compostable cups
to make their company more sustainable. Though composting is good, but there
are bigger problems created by having composted cups in New York. When a
person goes to a place like O café and gets a cup that can be composted to go they
will notice there is no place to put your compose. People who are not educated in
this, the average person, end up putting their cups into the recycling bin. By
putting you compostable items in the recycling bin can actually cause many more
problems then just putting it in the trash. When putting compostable cups in the
recycling bin when the recyclable items are broken down the compostable cup
releases really bad natural gases into our ecosystem.
When looking around New York you notice there is no where on the street
to put your compostable items in and even some place’s like Hu Kitchen sale
composted cups, but don’t have anywhere to put your compostable cups. Why is
this? The reason for this is that New York does not have a system to come and
collect compostable items; this is why you usually do not see any compostable
bins on the street. Some place don’t have it because they just do not want to
spend the extra money in hiring extra services to come and pick up their
compost. Even if they do hire a private sector to come and pick up there compost
like O Café, most people grab these cups to go and once they leave the café they
wont know where to put these cups and end up putting them in the trash or the
recycling bin.
Though this has become a problem in New York City there are many
different organization trying to help and change this issue. There are many
different things that we can do to help and prevent this problem. One way we
can help prevent this problem is to cooperate and work together. If people all
talk to the surrounding company’s who are trying to do the same thing they can
discuss and all pitch in to order a company to come and pick their compost. If
more and more people and company’s do this then sooner or later New York
will have to regulate a system to come and pick up composting. For example New
School has composting and people come and pick it up if new school partnered
with places like Joes café, Croque Mansour and other places around to develop a
composting system that works that will already make a big difference,
Another thing the city of New York could do to help better the problem is
to give out reusable cups where you can drop of at any coffee shop so they can
clean it and give it out to someone else. This will be something like mug sharing.
This will help eliminate the waste of paper cups, which people go through so
much in a week. Coffee cups are also really hard to recycle because they are
made with this plastic that is inside and it is not only harmful to the
environment, but is also very harmful to peoples health. These cups had become
such a problem in our society because no one wants to bring there own mug and
carry it all day because this is inconvenient and people do whatever is more
convenient to them.
For this project I ended up making a collage to show how many places in
New York have to go cups and how many places could come together and create
their own system in changing the way we do things in New York. I put this cups
in the trash and recycling bin because when people go out side that the place
they end up and instead of having compostable cups to help make the ecosystem
it creates a bigger a problem. So I made this collage/ poster to kind of show the
negative effects of composting so people are able to realize that we have to
create a better system for composting for it to actually work.