Melody Cribbs
Honors English
Mr. Matich
12-16-11
Argument Essay
Throw-Away Society
Around 200 million tons of garbage is thrown out every year by Americans alone.
This means that on average each American produces about 4.5 lbs of trash everyday
(Zimmerman). The solution for disposing of our garbage is not a reliable one. 57% of
our trash is buried in landfills, 16% is incinerated, and 27% is recycled
(“Plantetthoughts”). However, burning trash releases harmful toxins into the air, and
garbage in landfills can take thousands to millions of years to fully decay. What will
happen if we run out of space to bury our trash? With only 5% of the world’s population,
we produce 30% of the world’s waste (“Planetthoughts”). At this rate, our landfills will
be full before a better solution of disposing garbage is found. Our society may not only
be throwing away trash, we may also be throwing away a future of having the lifestyle
we enjoy now. Household garbage cans filling up daily across America is evidence to the
throw-away society our nation has developed.
Part of the reason for the abundance of throw-out waste in our society is
packaging. One-third of all garbage thrown away by Americans is packaging. If you
think about every candy wrapper, cereal box, plastic bag, and wrapping paper tube in the
country, you can imagine how much unneeded waste we throw away that it adds up to.
One popular industry we know is the restaurant business; in particular the fast food
business. Everything you buy from a fast-food chain will be wrapped in paper, put in a
paper bag, and given with a paper cup on the side for your drink. If you look around in a
fast-food restaurant you will see that everything is disposable. This makes eating fast and
easy, but it generates more waste than our society needs. Our grocery stores nationwide
thrive on plastic bags, but most people don’t know it takes ten to twenty years for one
plastic bag to decompose. Styrofoam, however, is one of the biggest environmental
killers we can throw into our trashcan. It takes one million years for Styrofoam to fully
decompose (Newcombe). One million years ago Styrofoam didn’t exist, but the
Styrofoam that will be thrown away today will sit, buried in our earth’s soil, for tenthousand centuries. We are not the only ones that will have to deal with our trash today.
Generations in the future will be faced with our problem. If we trash our land and our
planet, what other solutions will there possibly be in the future?
One may argue that we do not have a throw-away society but rather a
convenience-based society where everything is created to save us more time in our daily
activities. Disposable dishes save us the time it would take to wash them ourselves.
Throwing things away is easy and requires less energy and time which could be spent
doing something more productive. However, every choice has its consequence, and the
choice to use disposable items instead of non-disposable creates a lot more garbage.
Perhaps it would be better to spend a little time and energy washing dishes than to throw
disposable ones away where they will sit for decades, waiting to decompose.
It seems that as our society has progressed in our competitive capitalist and free
enterprise economy, rich with modern technology, we have also taken for granted the
natural resources used to make all our disposable items. America’s supermarkets seem to
advertise that their products to buy are as limitless as your money to spend is. However,
the resources taken from the earth are not limitless. If we keep using them like we are
now, they will be gone. The throw-away society our nation has developed into may
prove to be one of our biggest mistakes. At some point, our natural resources will be
completely used up, and our earth will be covered in garbage. We as humans are
responsible for our actions and must face the consequences concerning the trash we
create.
Works Cited
Zimmerman, E.A.. "How We Became A Throw-Away Society." Our Better Nature.
Chimalis, 04 Apr 2008. Web. 16 Dec 2011.
<www.ourbetternature.org/throwaway.htm>.
"The Truth About Trash- The Throw-Away Society." Planetthoughts. N.p., 11 mar 2008.
Web. 16 Dec. 2011. <planetthoughts.org>.
Newcombe, Rachel. "Facts About Trash and Garbage." Hotfact. Hotfact, 2005. Web. 20
Dec 2011. <www.hotfact.com>.