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Worth my time?

April 12th, 2007

Someone asked me last night whether it was worth my time to recycle plastic bottles. I answered yes, but I didn’t give a very good explanation about why. The following is hopefully a better explanation.

Modern America is living in a way that, to use a buzzword of the day, is not sustainable. By this I mean that our activities consume so much in energy and resources that they cannot continue this way very long. Furthermore, these activities create pollution in various forms, which is harmful not only to plants and animals but to humanity itself. This is not good. This has got to change. What we need is a “green” revolution of sorts - a radical change in our ways of doing things that will better respect each other and the rest of God’s creation.

A revolution takes at least two kinds of people. Consider, for example, the American Revolution. The Revolution had its “heroes” - prominent figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry who led the movement. These are the people we read about in the history books. Yet the Revolution would have been impossible without the support of many ordinary people who read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and decided that it was, well, common sense that the American colonies should not be governed by a faraway imperialist nation that valued them for economic reasons but didn’t even treat the colonists as equal citizens.

The green revolution will have its heroes too - people like Rachel Carson and maybe Al Gore who knew something was wrong and wouldn’t back down until their messages were clearly heard. (I say maybe Al Gore because I don’t think enough time has passed yet to evaluate Gore’s contributions to the environmental movement in the context of history.) But the green revolution, like any revolution, will only happen as you and I get on board. And as ordinary people like us do things like making efficient transportation choices, conserving energy, and recycling, things will change, slowly but surely.

How much difference does it really make whether I recycle one plastic bottle instead of throwing it away? I don’t really know. I know that it means a little less petroleum will be used to make new plastic things, and I know a landfill somewhere will be one bottle short. But I also know that when everyone does this, way bigger things will happen.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” It’s worth my time to recycle because the revolution begins with me. How about you?

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