Response to Derrick Jensen Excerpt - MM

"Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States." - Derrick Jensen

Today we read someone else's blog in class. The blog was about a guy who managed to cut his municipal waste down to zero for the entire year. It was probably really hard to do. He had to cut his waste that he threw away down to zero. That meant he had to recycle everything and throw away absolutely nothing for the entire year.

It was a almost impossible thing to do. He had to wear the same shoes for the whole year and they eventually broke. He cut off all power from his apartment. He had no refrigerator. Then in order to cut his municipal waste down to zero, he had to convince the big companies to lower their waste enough to count for his portion of the city. He did all that to lower his municipal waste to zero. Municipal waste only counts for 3 percent of all waste in the US.