It is ironic that global environmental change discourse warns of resource scarcity, of food scarcity, of water scarcity, when human society and the earth faces an abundance of waste. It is as if our equation is in reverse, and we are creating outputs of exactly what we do not want. Yet, we continue to extract and consume and dump resources, used maybe only once, into landfills as if we can always get more. The throw-away norms cause us to continually inflict harm on the very life systems that sustain us. Instead of repurposing our resources, instead of designing systems that work and nurture the earth, we have a system designed for perpetual extraction and perpetual accumulation of whatever can be taken from earth’s lifesystems. Soon – if not already – city dumps will be more plentiful with materials and resources to reuse than actual mines or forests. We cannot go on like this forever. We need to arrive at a point where materials are sacred and people collaborate within the community to recirculate and revitalize resources and materials, where purely self-centered convenience waste is unacceptable, and waste as we know it today is obolete. [Photo is an areal of fracking trailings in Canada from the book Industrial Scars: The hidden cost of consumerism.]
