Where’s my Kleenex?

Our assignment was to write down everything that we threw away, or used up, for a week and think about where the “stuff” came from. It seemed easy enough at first as I wrote down the empty yogurt container and tea bag I used that morning. I try to reuse products anyways, using canvass bags instead of plastic at the grocery store, a “wrap-n-mat” for my sandwiches, and bringing a coffee mug to campus instead of buying new coffee every day and throwing away the cup. I thought this was going to be a piece of cake and I was going to be known as Super Sustainable Chelsea.

It was easy, that is, until I caught a cold. Suddenly I was throwing paper away all over the place and simply not caring. I made myself some soup, using energy to heat it and recycling the tin can afterwards. It was a privilige I knew many people in the world do not have, and I felt ridiculous for making such a big deal out of the cold. But the reality was I felt miserable and I wanted to feel better, no matter what it took. NyQuil saved my life eventually, but I went through a whole box of Kleenex (product placement!) before unconsciousness took over.

That is when I realized how much easier it is to not be sustainable. My house only gets the recycling picked up every two weeks, and when it does finally get taken it is a tiny fraction of the giant pile of recycling waiting for judgement day in my kitchen. When I say giant pile of recycling, I mean Giant Pile of Recycling Soon to Become the Dreaded Recycling Monster. The amount of times I have kicked a tin can coming in for my coffee in the mornings are too many to count, along with the amount of times I have just barely resisted the urge to chuck everything in the giant garbage bin belonging to the apartment complex next door to us. It would be so. much. easier.

Therein lies the problem for sustainability. There are people who will not make the connection about how finite our resources are and how each person contributes to the problem in such a massive amount- either because they do not have time or opportunity to find out about the issue or because of simple stubborness to change. Even thinking about where that seemingly endless supply of Kleenex came from, and the work that must have been involved in making it and sending it to me, is an almost overwhelming concept that made my cold-stricken mind shrivel into the corner. I did not go anywhere without a good bundle in my pocket, and would have been even less of a happy camper without it. Would I have survived? Yes. But I made my choice and used a ridiculous amount of disposable product, and I felt better because of it. I feel guilty, but not enough to swear off Kleenex.