Our wasteful ways

Okay, I’ve been thinking about this strange idea. And when I describe it to you, you’re going to think I’m just trying to be shocking. Suspend your skepticism and hear me out. Maybe I’m on to something here (or maybe I’m just crazy).

We are an extremely wasteful society. Think about all the things you throw away in a given day. You wash your hands, dry them with a paper towel, and throw it away. Buy a cup of coffee and it comes in a paper cut, with a plastic top, with a sleeve. You buy some electronics, and you don’t think twice about the fact that the product is wrapped multiple times (plastic bags, Styrofoam, a box, cellophane, etc.). Most people probably blame this on culture. Our society has wasteful habits, and it’s difficult to slow the momentum of this.

But maybe the root of this problem is actually physiological. If you think about it, our biology is set up to be wasteful. We eat and drink, and we make waste (don’t laugh, I’m being serious). The waste isn’t useful for much, so we have to dispose of it. And this has been going on for every species on the Earth, for hundreds of millions of years.

So next time you hear a discussion on how we need to conserve the environment more, ask yourself what really started our wastefulness. Maybe our wasteful ways aren’t just a bad habit. Maybe they’re fundamental to how we operate as organisms, and this may make it that much harder to reverse the harm we do to the environment.