I was just at a trash summit put together by the Alice Ferguson Foundation.
The Foundation teaches kids about the outdoors and environmental stewardship, but the problem was that they were getting all this trash washed up on their property on the banks of the Potomac River. So they started the Trash Free Potomac Watershed with the goal of making it trash free by 2013.
Anyway, at their trash summit, someone was talking about the big problem of finding bags full of cups and what not from the big chain restaurants that people just turfed out of their cars after chowing down a fast food meal from the drive through.
I thought: no one was complaining about the litter resulting from food that is actually good for you. Nobody was finding or complaining about the Potomac being choked up by heads of lettuce or apple cores or carrots–you know food that fortifies without making us fat.
And it suddenly occurred to me that only food that is bad for us has any trash associated with it. Only food that is bad for us needs packaging. So I’ve been thinking about a new healthy eating diet. All you have to do is never eat food that has packaging associated with it and you’ll automatically end up healthy and skinny!
Healthier people, healthier planet. Yay! Because it turns out that what trashes the planet trashes ourselves.
PS Can you think of other examples of what trashes the planet trashes ourselves? Leave the thought behind here. Thanks!