So, as a part of my new job (employed again in the renewable energy industry at last!) I went to a conference on Friday focused on energy efficiency and sustainability more generally. While it was more or less a bust on a professional level, I did emerge from it with one anecdote to share.
A full 2/3 of the audience at this conference was composed of independent "sustainability consultants," a job description and market that I think is so thoroughly over-saturated at this point that it is of extremely limited usefulness. (No offense to those of you pursuing that path, and best of luck.) It was no real surprise, then, that when we broke for lunch I was seated in a group of four people, two of which were consultants of this type.
One of them, a somewhat conservative, middle aged man, announced that his particular area of focus was on paperless offices and reducing paper use. He had all manner of statistics, facts, and figures on the topic- Iron Mountain alone has X million cubic feet of paper in storage, the US uses Y million c.f. of paper per year, which is the equivalent of completely filling Z Nimitz class aircraft carriers and stacking them end-to-end. Paper milling is the third most polluting industry in the U.S., etc.
Now, by and large I agree with these points, don't get me wrong- as much as I appreciate the sensual experience of picking up a book, I've moved my own library as much as possible to an electronic format, and think that transmission of electrons makes a lot more sense than cutting down and flattening trees. (Though there are definitely arguments to be made about the embodied energy and pollution cost associated with microprocessors as well...) So I am totally onboard with his core message.
What had me shaking my head in disbelief, though was watching after we'd completed our meals as this evangelist of paperless offices, this man with such an incredible battery of criticism against paper use, proceeded to carefully put the corn-based plastic fork from his lunch, the unused napkins, the plastic wrap, the cardboard box, the brown paper bag, and, yes, even the aluminum can from the soda he had with it all, directly into the trashcan. This, despite the fact that there was a) a compost bin directly adjacent to the trash cans and b) a recycle bin about 30' away on the opposite wall. And he looked at me as he did it, announcing bitterly that "*this* is the problem with paper!"
Now, it took me all of about 30 seconds while sitting and chatting with these folks to separate out the detritus from lunch, which wound up being entirely compostable but for the bit of plastic wrap my sandwich came in and the aluminum can from my own soda.
This sort of thing gives sustainability a bad name, people. If you aren't willing to spend half a minute out of your day taking care of the inefficiencies and waste involved in your *own* life, please get off the stump. To invoke a proverb, before commenting on the twig in your neighbor's eye, look first to the log in your own.
