“Should Convenience Overrule Conservation” was the title of a recent Letter to the Editor in my local newspaper. It was on the topic of choosing to redo a highway to make it more convenient for people to get around versus destroying a natural landmark of stone to do it (and I’m talking about a highway that was just built 2 years ago).

It got me thinking about all the ways a lot of people choose convenience over conservation every day and how our obsession with convenience and ease destroys our planet a little more every day. landfill

Some of the things that came to mind:

- using paper plates instead of regular plates because we don’t want to wash dishes.
- insisting on year round access to fruits and vegetables even though things like out of season strawberries have to be shipped thousands of miles just so we can have that taste of summer in the dead of winter.
- building houses that are bigger than those built by previous generations even though our families are smaller.
- deciding 2 or 3 (or more) bathrooms in a house is an absolute necessity. My husband is 48 and is one of 8 children. His family of 10 survived just fine using one bathroom and nobody was ever late for school. He said everyone learned to be efficient in the bathroom which also saved water and energy because nobody even thought about taking a shower that was longer than 5 minutes.
- driving 10 to 20 miles to buy fast food instead of staying home and having something there because a person is “just to tired to cook” which uses un-necessary fuel and creates a lot of extra garbage with all those wrappers and bags that food comes in.
- buying big trucks just in case we might want to haul something instead of a smaller more fuel efficient vehicle.
- not recycling.
- throwing usable items away because we want something bigger and better or we are too lazy to take the things to a donation center like Goodwill or Salavation Army so the items could be used by someone else. My father-in-law works at a dump and recycling center. In the last year he has given us the following things that people brought to the dump to throw away: a barely used food processor that works great; a bag of dishcloths that were brand new; a bicycle that only needed a new tire; a pool table light; a cast iron frying pan that was rusty and just needed a good scrubbing; and a box of hosta plants.

It’s pretty sad.

What can you think of to add to this list?

Please share your thoughts or ideas in the comments section.