Bill Mckibben: A Wasteful World

The United States of America is one of the most wasteful countries on the face of the earth for a number of different reasons. In Bill McKibben's “Waste Not, Want Not,” McKibben states “There’s waste that comes from everything operating as it should, only too much so.”(332). The three most harmful kinds of waste that McKibben identifies are household waste, nuclear waste, and government waste. First, excessive household waste contributes to several of the environmental problems that we are facing today. McKibben writes, “More than 46,000 pieces of plastic debris float on each square mile of ocean.”(334). The decline in the water quality of our oceans is a real epidemic. According to EcoWatch, about one million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals die every year from the plastic debris floating in our oceans. Also, EcoWatch states that “In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every

We live in a wasteful country, many of us take things such as clean drinking water, a full tank of gas, and fresh air to breathe for granted. Many people in our country agree with McKibben when it comes to their opinion on where their tax dollars are being spent among other things. McKibben writes, “Want to talk about government waste? We’re going to end up spending north of a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq, which will go down as one of the larger wastes of money —and lives—in our history.”(334). McKibben goes on to say that, “But we spend more than half a trillion a year on the military anyway, more than the next ten nations combined.”(335). It is outrageous how much money our government wastes, everyone in this country from the president himself to students here at Augusta Tech need to think of ways they can personally cut down on waste and be more efficient in their daily