a Day Consumption - Rosalynh Woo

Of the resources I have consumed, I felt it significant to categorize them in two sections: reusable and not reusable. To my astonishment, more than half of what I use was single-use-only resources that become no longer useable and thrown away. The air I breathe 24 hours a day, electricity, gas in my car, foods and make-ups are all manufactured or drawn from different sources around the globe, yet after brief uses, the gathered and manufactured resources are used up, often leaving nothing but wastes behind. While clothes and dishes are washed and reused, such cycle is not permanent. In another words, even ‘reusable’ resources are abandoned after they lose their intended functions.

With the category of ‘reusability’ behind, asking whether resources I consume are recyclable reveals predictable yet terrifying facts. More than half of my consumed resources are not recyclable. Those would include consumptions of foods and services. But, comparing what are recyclable and reusable, it came to my attention that a majority of resources are neither recyclable nor reusable. Shampoo and cooking foils, for instance, are designed for single-usages that, after used, pollute water and earth as well as air when incinerated. Obvious as it seems, majority of my consumptions lead in one way or another to serious pollutions despite the number of facilities to reduce the impact of pollutants released daily into nature. With such destructive consumptions of resources repeated daily and weekly, people cannot bother themselves with news headlines about unprecedented changes in global weather and ecosystems and the reduction of the ozone layer.