In Spill It 12/2022, Ian M. Rogers critiques Rani Jayakumar’s article on how saving the earth starts with consumers being mindful. Rogers contends that Jayakumar’s advice is “spot-on. The problem, though, is that it won’t affect the biggest perpetrators in the environmental crisis: large corporations.” Both Rogers and Jayakumar are “spot on” but I fear that, if we rely on big corporations caring about the environment, about anything other than the bottom line, and on consumers becoming mindful: our planet is doomed.

Rogers reminds us of what we already know: most big Corp CEO’s have never and will never care about the environment. They don’t care, for example, that plastic recycling is not environmentally sustainable and that only 5-6% of plastics are actually recycled. Why should mega-corporations care? They can depend on how consumers have historically lived in our fantasy world, a world that allows instant gratification, allows us to mindlessly purchase infinite products wrapped in plastics and cellophane. We’re addicted to glitz, to items displayed in shiny, streamlined, eye-catching plastic packages. Throughout history, industry has always relied on consumers to ignore corporations’ blatant disrespect for the environment. Who’s to blame? Corporations or consumers? This blame game prevents all of us from having to confront corporate greed and our mindless consumerism. It’s a free pass–allowing us to hand a dystopian environmental future to the next generation without feeling any guilt.

Like Rogers, I reminisced, recalled my teenage years when we believed Captain Planet would magically save us all by simply reducing, reusing and recycling. Instead of enjoying my memories of those early Captain Planet episodes after a long school day, I shuddered. My mind drifted back, way back to earlier, more urgent warnings from environmentalists. In 1947 Marjory Stoneman wrote The Everglades: River of Glass and in 1962, Rachel Carson shocked this country, warned the Greatest Generation to act, to save our environment and the human race when she wrote Silent Spring. These two iconic women forced our parents and grandparents to become mindful and to acknowledge how our very existence depends on our planet’s delicate web of life. Unfortunately, many of us, who were born pre-1964, seem to have conveniently forgotten these warnings.

Decades later, Gen Xers and Millennials heard these same warnings from the Green Movement, Greenpeace, and yes, even Captain Planet. These movements implored consumers to care, but failed. Changing our buying habits, becoming “mindful,” and saving this planet will never happen until we all take an honest look at ourselves, until we recognize how our buying habits prove that many of us just don’t care!

Is caring about the environment even possible at this point? Go ahead, try. Go to the grocery store and come home with only 50% of your groceries wrapped in plastic. This means crossing out yogurt, bags of frozen veggies…you can see where I’m headed here. We’d struggle to just eat if we avoided buying foods wrapped in plastics.

A few years back, after trying and failing to reduce our household’s single-use plastics, I threatened my husband that, instead of recycling our plastics, I’d stuff our plastics in the garage for one year then alert the media. As they arrived, our garage door would slowly open and their media vans would be buried in plastics. My husband considered the idea; he even looked amused imagining a reporter, waist deep in plastics, speaking into a camera. However, he didn’t think it would make a difference. He reminded me of how a co-worker, a Gen Xer in his mid-forties, threw a plastic bottle in the trash. When my husband suggested he throw it in the recycle bin instead, this man responded, “it doesn’t matter, this planet’s fucked anyhow.”

Some Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials care. For example, Roger’s and Jayakumar’s articles sounded an alarm. My question is, do we care enough to take action?

Three years ago, I retired, returned to college, and took many classes with 18–22-year-olds (Gen Z). An on-line design class asked us to post our thoughts regarding how product design impacts the environment. I apologized to my Gen Z classmates for forcing them to clean up the mess my generation created. Most agreed, most believed that, because of their parents and grandparents’ apathy, the human race was headed towards an environmental catastrophe. They described the burden many Gen Z feel and the urgency to resolve the environmental peril this planet is facing. They echoed the concerns of my parents, grandparents, and the soul of this nation in 1962, a nation that demanded change after reading Silent Spring.

Rogers, Jayakumar, my fellow Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials correctly blame both Big Corporations and consumers’ mindlessness for the environmental mess we’re in, but I challenge everyone to Google “Gen Z environmentalist” and peruse the first few pages of the 858,000 hits. Our children and grandchildren are running out of patience, they’re fed up with just pointing fingers, with the powerlessness that this blame game has magnified. While their parents and grandparents waste time blaming elusive culprits, I sensed that, unlike me, many Gen Z are so fed up they would not hesitate to dump a years’ worth of plastics on a media van; they would not hesitate to bury the white house beneath a mountain of plastics if they had to. Do you really care about your children, about your grandchildren, about future generations? If you do, prove it, support Gen Z environmentalists. If not, ignore them and see what happens. Stay tuned!

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