#9 – The Disposable Society

How many trips a day do you make to the trash can? How many times have you not been able to recycle that bottle that you just finished? One of the greatest failing of our economy is that it prefers the disposability and convenience over quality. Just look at the most expensive things on the market today. Everything from laptops to fruit cups all is more expensive than buying a bag of apples and cutting them yourselves. This practice of consumption is the main reason why we have so many environmental issues, and why the health of the average American person is in decline.

Fast Foods are the poster industry for the disposable industry.

Let’s take a look at one of the egregious followers of this consumption trend, fast food restaurants. The first thing to realize about fast food restaurants is that they are not selling food. Places like McDonalds and Burger King are not in the business of creating quality food.  When you are ordering your Big Mac you are not ordering a burger, rather you are ordering consistency and convenience. We all know that you could probably find a better or similar tasting burger elsewhere, but we continue to go to these fast food places mainly because you know what you get and it is relatively convenient. But the price of that convenience is cleverly undersold to the consumer. Fast Food restaurants are the largest purchaser of beef (a natural depleting industry on its own), products are loaded with additives and fat to make them taste better, and are meticulously put together and package into an assembly line burger.  Not to mention the plastic cups, water usage, waste, and all the other natural detriments that occur from calf cradle to the wrapping of the burger. Afterwards we throw away our wrappers and cups to go to the nearest landfill where it will probably be for the next century. The fast food industry is a disposable industry mainly because the product is unimportant only the convenience of the product.

The world is full of land to be used up and then abandon.

Webster defines disposable as an item that is ‘design to be used once and then thrown away.’ There is no life cycle cost of a disposable object; there is only the bottom line of convenience. The product is only as important as it satisfied a minimum requirement; the product is actually the disposability of the product. Just think of other products that are similar to the fast food case: laptops, candy bars, processed foods, pre-prepared foods, cars, buildings, and etc.  A lot of these types of products are traditional disposable. Take a building for instance. A building typically design for a lifespan from anywhere from 20 to 100 years. But little is traditionally though of the life cycle cost of a building, in fact when a building is design and construction the only factors that are considered are the construction costs yet buildings need constant maintenance a steady supply energy, and water. On top of that after the building passed its prime a decision needs to be made to renovate or demolish because no life cycle plans were made for the building. Owners will find it cheaper to demolish the building even though the building materials will just end up in some landfill slowly decomposing. But if that building had a life cycle plan, the materials used in the building could be salvaged more effectively or allow for cheaper renovation.

Recycling gets you more bang for your buck, not convenience.

There are plenty of less disposable systems out there in the world. For example take the glass bottle industry in other countries. Glass bottles are usually used for beers and sodas but are expensive to manufacture. So instead of manufacturing glass bottles, companies set up a cycle to reused returned bottles. After all it is a lot cheaper to clean and refill a glass bottle then it is to create on. The process is less convenient because you have to return your waste, but the product not only has a lower cost, but a lower environmental impact. People are no longer buying convenience but the actual product. You don’t need the glass bottle but you need what’s in it. In this type of process the waste is reduce significantly because the life cycle cost of the bottle is consider and the bottle is used to its fullest potential. Disposability and convenience is not important but the efficiency of the system is now the deciding factor.

Convenience will ultimately lead into a dead end.

The American society is dependent on disposability and convenience. The easier and timelier products always become the dominant product in the market place. Cars were more convenient then trains and passenger services, plastic bottles are cheaper to produce then glass bottles, corn syrup is cheaper then sugar. These consumer shifts have resulted in a less safe, less healthy environment has well as a less healthy society.

The Disposable Trash Can. What will they think up next?