Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Why?

Our society is becoming increasingly aware of environmental problems. On the evening news, we hear stories about polar bears drowning because of global warming, or about gas prices increasing because of diminishing resources. On our DVD players, we see movies—documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth and action films like The Day After Tomorrow—that show how our world is affected by our negligence. On the highways, we see exhaust fumes and litter and old tires and cars with bumper stickers reading “Daddy, what were trees like?” and “There is nothing dumber than a Hummer.” We know there is a problem. Even so, a lot of people fail to take the actions necessary to improve our environment. Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they don’t want to help? In most cases, people neglect the environment not because of laziness or apathy but because they do not realize how much their actions really matter. 
Despite being bombarded with constant “Protect the environment” messages, a lot of people have habits that are not environmentally conscious. For example, many people waste gas by making unnecessary driving trips. These people, if they have errands to run, might make a few trips to do them—going to the supermarket in the morning, stopping by the dry cleaners at lunch, and running to the post office just before it closes at five o’clock. Why don’t these people combine their errands into one trip to save gas? Others waste energy around their homes. They might leave lights and televisions on when they aren’t even in the room. They complain “I’m cold!” and turn their heat up to 75 degrees instead of putting on a sweater. Many people fill up the landfills by throwing away too much trash. Everyone hears the saying “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but they don’t take it seriously, filling their garbage cans with bottles and cans and food waste. These same people might shake their heads and “Tsk tsk” at the overt, large-scale environmental enemies—the inattentive ship captains that cause oil spills, the underdeveloped countries that clear-cut their hardwood forests—but they are reluctant to change their own behaviors.
         Some people behave this way simply do not care about the environment. Maybe they don’t believe that the environment is really in danger. For example, when we are facing sub-freezing days in the winter time, it’s hard to believe in global warming. Or they might believe that since they have heard about pollution since they were little kids, for forty or fifty years, and nothing seems that bad today, that the people who complain about the environment are exaggerating. Other people might figure that the real effects of environmental damage are so far in the future, it won’t affect them, so why should they care? When people talk about the effects of global warming, for example, many of the effects they describe won’t come about for decades. If most of us will be dead by then, why do we need to do anything about it?
         Other people care, but they don’t realize how much their actions affect the environment. They believe that it’s only the “Big industries” that are really affecting the environment. In their opinions, if they leave a light on in their house or if they turn their air conditioning up too high in the summer, that’s nothing compared to the big company that is doing the same thing. They believe that the effects of their individual actions are minimal. The reality is that small changes can add up, especially if more people do them. One carbon footprint calculating site, for instance, estimates that a one degree reduction on a thermostat can reduce a single household’s carbon emissions by 300 kilograms (Turn down, n.d., p. 1). What if everyone in a neighborhood, in a town, in a city were able to survive at 69 degrees instead of 70? That’s a reduction of 100,000 kg of carbon in a year, a promising start in the effort to reverse global warming.
         They also might not even realize how bad some of these environmental issues are. For instance, why are we told to “reduce, reuse, recycle”?  We all know recycling is good, but why? When people do not understand the benefits of an environmentally conscious habit or the harm of not partaking in this habit, they are less likely to incorporate it. When I was younger, I fancied myself an environmentalist. I would set all my cans and bottles aside from my regular trash. However, sometimes I didn’t feel like lugging them all to the recycling center, so eventually I would just dump them in my regular trash. In the same way, I would buy plastic garbage bags and fill them up with trash, put them out by the curb for pickup, and forget about them. As I have become more educated about the environment, I realize that the extra effort to recycle and to limit what goes in the trash is actually necessary.
[not finished yet--just a working draft]

Reference
Turn down. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.mycarbonfootprint.eu/carboncalculator1_en.asp