Waste, or The Mark of Every School Year.
Ok, I was just about to study for the GRE, but I need to get this off my chest first:
Maybe your initial reaction is, Wow! Your complex needs more trash cans! But that is not mine. These pictures represent what happens when consumption goes unchecked. When students from financially stable families move in and out of college apartments, paying no mind to the things they have bought and ultimately leave behind.
This isn't just trash. It's waste. Waste in one of its most shameful forms. Waste that no one will miss, as everything in this dump can and will be easily replaced. Waste that not many will ponder, lest it grows enough to block the passage of the parking lot.
Waste marks the beginning and end of each passing school year. It starts with the long lines at Walmart and Target and ends with overflowing trash receptacles all over this tiny town. Every year students frantically rush out for furnishings and accessories that they will buy and throw away and buy again next year. Things that could easily be resold, or reused, or at least recycled. Things that maybe they didn't need in the first place, or maybe broke within the first few months of use, or maybe would've been too burdensome to move. Things and all of their plastic packaging, which will sustain long after they've moved away.
It is time to take a long hard look at our things.
Posts
2 comments:
ugh- what a crazy pile of trash. it is so sad, this disposable life we lead with moving. and i will admit that i was a part of that school crowd, right up until my last year of grad school.
the piles of garbage bags... shudder. thankfully, with my many moves since grad school we always donated our extra stuff away. that and it taught me just how little i truly needed :)
@ecoyogini
no, I was definitely part of that crowd too my first three years of college...it's only been within the past year that I've been better about my accumulation of stuff. I didn't mean to sound like I am totally above it--I've had my fair share of compulsive buying and unthoughtful chucking.
but ever since I've started trying to change my consumption habits, things like overflowing garbage bins have become spectacles of how disconnected we all seem to be with our stuff. even among college students, who are generally more "progressive" about these types of things...
Post a Comment