My comment became a post....

This started off as a response to Jamie’s Fast Food Nation post and it got too long.

Warning: this is a soap box and a long one at that. Comments/Arguments/Tyrades/ Professions of Love are all welcome.

I too am also torn about what to do with the information. So much so that I can't even decide if I want to read the book. I was disturbed after Super Size Me too and I thought I would never eat McDonald's again. But I did. It's so easy to get sucked into fast food when a) you're single and only eat for one and b) your life is go-go-go-go and c) you are poor. I have always been a "well what difference will it make, I am only one person" kind of thinker. And I hate politics. But if 2 million people say "what difference will I make" - well that's a lot of difference. But I just don't have the heart for activism. I love Animal Planet and I watch those people live every day like that- that is why I have such a love for Steve Irwin. There are people in this world that live their life fighting for what they believe with every breath. I just don't have it. Does that make me a product of my American culture? I think so. Or does that make me lazy? Maybe. But I am with you (Jamie) on the dilemma. And I see Rachel's point too. I had to kind of step back from myself when I took Microbiology and I had to tell myself that I cannot protect myself from every single germ out there. And working in a hospital doesn’t help either. I just don't know.

Morgan Spurlock – the guy that did Super Size Me – does a series for FX called 30 Days. It is totally awesome! I totally recommend it! Well he did one where two uber-consumers from New York City went to live at this commune type deal where the people that lived there were totally self sufficient. They used Solar Power and recycled everything and didn’t eat meat and made compost out of all of their “waste” and just totally lived off the land and didn’t use any kind of smelly soap or deodorants or anything. They refitted VW diesel engines to run off of vegetable oil that they got from restaurants so there were no fuel emissions, just all kinds of things that take super effort. Soap and products get into water runoff and pollute water and kill fish. But I love my smell good stuff. There was all kinds of statistics about how much people throw away. And with population growth the way it is, in a very short time we will need like an extra Earth just for our trash. No joke. Cruise ships and sea vessels of all kind dump all their waste, trash, whatever directly into the oceans. Just dump it. We all know there is global warming, ozone depletion, animals going extinct every day b/c of human encroachment…..we are sucking the life right out of our glorious planet. We all know this and we do nothing.

Some things that I loved about Germany/Europe….they recycle EVERYTHING. In Germany, wherever there is a trash bin there are 4 slots, one for green/brown glass, one for clear glass/metals, one for paper, and one for plastic. At the McDonald’s they would have you set your tray in a cart instead of throwing everything away. They recycled cups, straws, plastic utensils, the tray liner piece of paper, and the food they would put into compost. And this is what people do in their homes. My friend lived on the economy and she recycled everything too. She had a pan that she would throw her food in that would get turned into compost and everything else that ended up in the trash can could be recycled. And her trash was the same as yours or mine. There is very little that is actually genuine “trash”. If they sit in their cars for longer than 2 minutes, they turn their engines off. The vast majority of people drive standards (better gas mileage), diesels, and compact fuel efficient vehicles. Cars are really just transportation for them, not social status symbols. On post they had all these bins for aluminum and paper and glass and cardboard but most people wouldn’t bother b/c it took too much effort. All the beer that people drank (and believe me there was a lot of it) mostly got thrown in a trash bin not 50 feet from a bin for glass. Americans just aren’t programmed for it. B/c the greater population doesn’t want to think about it, much less make any effort. I cringe every time I am out somewhere and throw away a plastic soda bottle. I think about it EVERY time I throw something away that could be recycled. And I am just as guilty as the next person of just pushing it out of my mind and getting on with my day. But how do we change the attitudes of generations of people in an entire nation? Maybe that is too ambitious. I don’t know. I seriously don’t. It exhausts me to think about it. But can we really afford to do nothing if there is to be an Earth for our children? That may sound cliché, but I really think it’s a valid question.