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This familiar saying was typically muttered by Mom after you caught a bad cold usually doing something foolish -- like playing out in the rain without a warm jacket. Later on in life, the same prevention motto held true. How many health problems would have hurt a lot less -- both in physical and financial terms -- if we would have paid more attention to warning signs in the first place? The fundamental virtue of prevention is a valuable lesson that applies to broader notions of public health and the environment, too. Preventing a problem is usually the cheapest way to go when it comes to protecting urban and rural environments. One of the best examples is taking personal responsibility for your own garbage. Consider this: each Californian, on average, generates eight pounds of waste every day. According to the California Integrated Waste Management Board, Californians are responsible for 44 million tons of garbage annually. Nationwide, the total is more like 200 million tons, more than a quarter of which is merely packaging, the No. 1 waste problem in America. The recycling ethic has helped stem the flow of garbage into expensive landfills. But it is only a part of the solution to the waste management challenges facing California. Recycling will always be a part of the strategy behind successful waste management efforts, but ultimately, its role should diminish over time. How can that be? Attribute it to the beauty of prevention. Prevention in the waste management arena is commonly referred to as source reduction. Its really a rather simple concept. Eliminate waste before it is created. Less waste means less of a waste management problem, less of a need for recycling. While recycling is an effective way to manage waste materials once they have been generated, waste prevention actually reduces the amount of material used in the first place. At its core, waste prevention is the design, manufacture, purchase or use of materials to reduce the amount, or toxicity, of trash generated. If you dont create waste, nobody has to pay to store, collect or haul it to a landfill. Waste prevention offers significant side benefits as well. It saves precious natural resources by encouraging more efficient use of raw material. And it reduces pollution associated with extraction of raw materials, manufacturing excess products, and waste disposal. Waste prevention not only reduces the amount of stuff that needs to be recycled, it saves everyone involved money. It reduces waste disposal and handling costs because it avoids a whole series of expensive procedures, including municipal composting, landfilling or combustion in power plants or incinerators. This reduces need for government taxes. And consumers, such as yourself, save directly by buying only what you need, in bulk, with less packaging! A law passed in 1989 established a statewide goal of reducing the states waste stream by 50 percent by the end of this decade. Help do your part and try to reduce the waste generated in your home in half. It will take a supreme effort by all to meet this ambitious timetable. The key to making waste prevention work in order to reach the 50 percent waste reduction goal are not government programs, but individuals. We are all used to doing things a certain way. Preventing waste means we have to make lifestyle changes: purchasing more durable products and rejecting items with individually wrapped or single-serving containers; repairing and reusing items we might have once thrown away. When the cures involve million dollar investments in waste processing facilities, it seems to make a lot of cents to put stock into more than a few ounces of prevention. |
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