Today is Earth Day, the one day of the year that people come together, sing Kumbaya, and recite the platitude that every day should be Earth Day. News outlets the world over will give simple suggestions on how we all can be more green in our daily lives. But once all of the Earth Day celebrations and activities are over, reducing, reusing, and recycling will, to a large extent, be forgotten until mid-April of next year.
Why is it so difficult to get people to adopt simple practices that can help save our environment? It all comes down to convenience. While it’s just as easy to use paper grocery bags as plastic, one would have to make more trips out to the car to shuttle all of the groceries into the house, which is inconvenient. While it’s just as easy to walk to the corner store as it is to drive (and get exercise to boot), it takes longer to walk, and that is inconvenient. And while it’s just as easy to replace burned-out incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, which have 10x longer lifespan while using about 75% less energy, their initial cost is more, which, again, is inconvenient. And that’s not even mentioning such things as taking public transportation, recycling plastic, paper, aluminum, and steel, or setting the thermostat a bit lower in the winter and a bit higher in the summer, all of which, while simple fixes that could help sustain our environment, are just a bit too inconvenient for the average American.
“Give a hoot, don’t pollute” is a tagline that I remember from childhood, and one that I try to live by. But until the general public adopts this attitude as well, convenience will reign, and Earth Day will remain the one day out of the year when we are able to see just how good things could be if people in fact believed that every day should be Earth Day.
