Waste Not Want Not By Bill Mckibben Summary

Americans are accustomed to wasting whenever they get the chance to, without thinking of the consequences it has on the environment. The overconsumption encouraged by the industrial economy has led to environmental issues. The essays "Waste Not, Want Not" by Bill Mckibben and "Forget Shorter Showers" by Derrick Jensen provides readers with various points on waste, how much of it there is, and the dangers it has caused to the environment; each giving their own side on the culprits behind damaging the world. Jensen claims that the largest contributor to the environment problem is the industrial economy (341). For years, the environment has getting destroyed resulting in the melted Arctic ice caps due to global warming because of the pollution that goes into the atmosphere. It won’t stop there; if waste continues to accumulation at this rate, the earth will become a desert or covered by seawater. The world is a very delicate ecosystem and pollution is taking a toll on

When they wake up the first thing on their minds isn't how much they have wasted. Mckibben mentions that "Plastic water bottles, one after another, 80 million of them get tossed everyday"(332), explaining that most Americans don't separate the recyclables from the non-recyclables because there’s no time to do so or it’s simply something that people don’t enjoy doing. Mckibben says that “We toss 14% of the food we buy at the store” (334). He also tells his audience how they have stopped worrying about the amount of oil that goes into cars and now there isn’t that much left. Not only that “Americans discard enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every three months and aluminum represents less than 1% of our solid waste stream”(334). Lastly, many Americans are obsessed with buying cars that ultimately helps pollute the air because they like fast cars, even though it’s illegal to go pass a certain speed