Student Life Archives

Scott Bressler

The moment I had been waiting for all day had finally arrived: April 23, 2008. After finishing with my classes, I was really ready to pick up the package I had ordered from Amazon.com. And as I held the brown box in my hands, excitement turned into a hint of bitterness with myself, as I thought about all the packaging I would have to strip away, to reveal a measly 100-page book. While the guilt flooded me, cognitive dissonance tried to balance the situation out by saying that I would just recycle the packaging-the outer cardboard box, two paper flyers, one paper receipt and the plastic wrapping around my book-and it will all be fine.

As I approached the trash bins, I saw a cleaning person cleaning out the bins. And as I was ready to throw the book-wrapping at the left side of the partitioning of the bin for plastic wastes, the cleaning person smiled at me and told me to just throw the wrapping in the plastic bag in the middle, where the cleaning person was stockpiling all the waste from the right and the plastic from the left into one, single, bag. I looked at the cleaning person, very befuddled, but not wanting to defy her authority over the trash collection, and I obeyed.

I obeyed. And to comfort me, the cleaning person said, “Nobody will know,” and continued on tying up the middle bag. And I walked away. One step at a time, slowly, confused, but away. The whole way back home, I could feel my body wanting to go back to ask the cleaning person how secretly defecting against society’s future was going to do anyone any good in the long run. But no, me, the so-called “environmentalist,” proponent of “every day is Earth Day,” walked away.

How many times had the person made such a convenient shortcut? How many times had I made sure that the soda can I picked up on the ground went to the left side of “Comingle” recyclables? Was the cleaning person just having a bad day? And why did I have the authority to judge the behavior of the cleaning person? I’m pretty sure that the cleaning person has a smaller carbon footprint than I do, with my plane rides and mango bars from South Africa.

I don’t know what point, what conclusion or what insightful advice I am trying to reach, as my heart is still trying to digest the whirlwind of emotions that have just struck me. I guess I had na’vely thought that the recycling I was doing was actually doing something positive for the environment, and not gathered all together headed for the landfills.

The day after Earth Day, I think about why there is just one day reserved for the environment. The day after Earth Day, I think about my elitist recycling juxtaposed with the cleaning person’s humble error. The day after Earth Day, I need to consider my approach toward environmentalism, and knowing that eating as a vegetarian and using metal utensils is not enough. What about education?

Every day should be Earth Day, and I’m glad I saw this on April 23, 2008, the day after Earth Day.

Tina Wang is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached by e-mail at twang@artsci.wustl.edu.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.