Even little problems taken to an end can expand into the realm of the overwhelming. Let me give a brief example: recycling. Out here in Santa Cruz County, it is taken pretty seriously. Paper in one bin, soiled paper in another, organic matter to a compost bin, numbered plastics in another, batteries, electronics… Most households have gotten used to the sorting and the stacking and the extra effort it all takes. All for a good cause, right?
But, what happens when the system breaks down?
Just a short year ago, we could take our trash to the dump and spend a good thirty minutes transferring our sorted waste into the bigger containers at the dump. Now? They will not and cannot take any of it. This means that almost everything we throw out is going into the landfill. We’re not alone in this. Plastics recycling has primarily ceased in the U.S. China stopped taking our plastics because the sorted types were not of absolute consistency. The same is happening for paper. Recycling glass is becoming very difficult too.
While active recycling wasn’t easy, it had a process, and if you set your mind to it, you could get it done. But what happens when you find out your yogurt cup, beer bottle, or old newspaper are part of more significant problems? A tiny yogurt cup goes from being a piece of trash all the way to a decision made by the Chinese government. You peel back the tin foil, stir your fruit up from the bottom and perhaps think, “I just want to eat yogurt, but now I’m thinking about geopolitical environmentalism.” A little part of your breakfast becomes a symbol of an overwhelming issue.
As a general rule, when people are confronted with an overwhelming problem, they shut down and ignore the whole thing. We often revert to, “Well, I tried. There’s nothing I can do about it.” This is natural, but only in the sense that we self-negate our agency because we cannot solve the whole problem. We go from being a point of difference to a victim; it becomes easy to give up.
The real issue here is that it is easy to blame something big enough that we don’t have to think about a fix. Realizing that every yogurt cup or wine bottle in California is a problem, makes it easy to stop being an answer. All because we don’t have THE answer.
The trick is to blame something smaller. In my house this week we’re blaming paper towels. We bought several rolls of bamboo cloth towels that can be reused multiple times before being thrown away. Next week maybe we will start blaming plastic wrap. We can do something about the smaller thing, and so we do. Isn’t it ironic that it is easier to blame something out of our control than do one little thing every moment that is?
Maybe we can convince a friend or two along the way and then they can do so with their friends and so on. However, how my friends react to my small acts of resistance does not matter one bit. The thing is just to do the one action that matters NOW. That is literally all any of us can do.