“We are going to be the ones paying for bad recycling habits in the long run.” These words continue to bounce around my mind every time I even start to think about the topic. Will it really be you and me paying the price for every single person’s current actions? Will we be here to experience our previously pure and beautiful land covered in our own garbage or oceans filled with plastic? Will the current residents of Salt Lake City, including myself, be charged more for garbage services because our landfills are at maximum capacity? Hopefully not.
I am not sure who technically owns this massive object we are floating around on in space, but I don't think it is right for us to destroy it. I look at the earth like a gift or a free home on which we were given the opportunity to live for as long as nature allows us. You wouldn't destroy something graciously given to you right in front of that person, yet that is what we are doing to the planet. Humans have evolved to produce an embarrassing amount of trash that will still be here thousands of years after we are gone. Can changing our habits now make up for what we have done and create a better future for our planet and generations to come?
In the past, Utah’s recycling percentages have ranked extremely low compared with other states across the country. On a local level, it is a big concern. Our landfills in Salt Lake City are filling up, fast. We are going to be the ones paying for bad habits in the future. Sure, we will be trading in natural views for ones covered in giant heaps of trash, but we will also literally be paying more money for our trash to be taken care of. Once our landfills in the Salt Lake Valley fill up, all garbage will have to be transported somewhere else, even out of the state. This will result in our garbage service bills going up and will make things more difficult for everyone. We cannot continue to depend on others to deal with our materials, especially since China recently proposed that it would no longer accept our plastic.
Out of sight, out of mind. As long as we don't have garbage piling up and causing odors in our kitchens, we couldn't care less, right? This mindset will not be beneficial to us in the long run, nor will our current waste habits. In May, the Salt Lake recycling/composting percentage rate, according to Waste Management, was 42 percent. This is better than 22.3 percent, which was the percentage in the past, but it is still not great. Considering how easy it is for us to simply separate trash from recyclable objects in our own homes, and the waste removal resources we have available to us, I would expect these numbers to be much higher.
There are currently small local businesses in Salt Lake City, such as Salt Lake County Sustainability, trying to emphasize the importance of recycling, but this doesn't seem to be enough. Maybe residents need to be able to see the consequences so they will change their lifestyles, but by the time this happens, it will be too late to clean up the mess we have made. The future of reducing, reusing and recycling products is up to us, the residents of Utah. We need to find alternatives and make changes in our individual lives that will eventually contribute to Utah and the world as a whole.