Sometimes I feel bad for Miss Earth, you know, having to carry all 7.5 billion of us. Not to mention half of the hundred things that she provides us with. Right now I bet she’s minding her own business floating up there rotating so we get to have our relaxing days and wild nights. She’s out there doing the most, and we’re over here filling her oceans with plastic, polluting her air, and trashing her grounds. You know, no big deal. Except, it is. The least we could do is take care of the place we spend our lives in. I think many fail to realize how toxic we are for the earth, that we produce so much waste that our poor home is slowly, but surely deteriorating.
One of the major causes of why there is so much trash on earth is the consumer culture. The demand for certain goods increases as they gain popularity, especially if the audience sees their favorite influencer with that certain something. The production of all things—including clothes,automobiles, bird-houses, use many of the earth’s resources and what’s left gets thrown back into the ocean or burned to never be used again. Which is absolutely terrible for the environment. That is when sustainable production and packaging come into the picture. Thankfully, certain individuals that care about the environment exist and are creating new ways to satisfy consumers while taking care of mother earth.
So what does earth’s future look like? Well, there’s multiple ways to approach that, but one thing we can surely foreshadow is the future of sustainable packaging and production. Methods such as using recycled materials to make specific products and packaging are the current start to these eco-friendly goods. You’ll begin to notice how fast society catches on to trends, how quickly all these businesses will hop on the eco-friendly packaging train, if they haven’t already done so; you want to know why? Because the consumer follows the trends and businesses follow the consumer. Soon we will see new ways to use our already recycled packaging for other purposes, we will have places to drop off old items that have the material to be made into something completely new. The options are endless, and we are heading in the right direction with doing whatever we can to reduce waste on earth. #Savetheturtles am I right?
Thus, in failing to take care of our planet it’ll only be a matter of time for it to disappear. In all truthfulness the future of the earth depends on us, to promote change and create new innovative ways to sustainably package and produce goods for the consumer culture before the earth falls into oblivion.
Essay by: Carolina Deras Herrera
Arizona State University
