When I started my first job in the summer after my junior year, I learned just how terrible the commercial world was towards the environment (well at least the mall I was working at). I worked at a tiny little frozen yogurt store sandwiched between Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works and I was appalled at the amount of recyclables I found out with the trash at the end of the night. Way back when, we made our yogurts from scratch. This meant we followed a strict formula including a gallon of milk, a pound of powder base and a container of flavor syrup. The containers, all of which were recyclable to some extent, end up where? Yes, you guessed it, the trash. In fact, the only thing that went to a recycling facility was cardboard, specifically cardboard that wasn’t covered in a plastic coding. By the end of each day, I would roughly estimate that there was at least 20 plastic milk containers in the trash bags that I then lugged out to the trash shoot. I hated how wasteful we were but the mall literally had no method of recycling plastics or metals. They ONLY took cardboard.
I then thought about the other stores in the mall that experienced the same phenomenon. There were restaurants and food stands that packaged their food in plastic and metal containers. There were clothing stores that packaged certain merchandise in plastic bags. There were service stores (like nail salons and massage parlors) that probably used a lot of plastic in their day to day business. And worst of all, there was so much that could have been done to prevent the wastefulness. All of this trash went directly to the dump EVERYDAY. There was just sooooo muchhhhh wasteeeee. The only way I could do anything about it would have been to gather all of the milk cartons and the containers and brought them home with me to recycle in my own bin. That would have solved just a tiny dent in the scheme of things however.
Materials are not the only things that commercial businesses waste. At the yogurt store, the frozen yogurt machines needed to be constantly running all day, every day. The only time they were turned off was when we cleaned them out and sanitized them for about an hour once a week. Other than that, the electricity was constantly being used. And these machines are powerful. They use up a lot of energy and release a lot of heat. The freezers and refrigerators are another source of energy consumers that seem to follow the trend of wastefulness. My boss had some giant ass freezers, not like the ones we have at home with the energy star sticker on them, but industrial sized, mega powerful and mega wasteful freezers. Even my job in State College makes me concerned about the way companies are going about their treatment of the Earth. I work at a clothing store downtown and while the lights and all that get turned off every night before we go home, the two HUGE neon lights that hang from the ceiling NEVER get shut off. They constantly run, illuminating the store this weird shade of blue. These lights don’t go easy on power either.
These couple of examples of commercial businesses I’ve seen just do not make me feel good about corporate America’s actions towards the Earth. If they are representing the average store in their consumption behaviors then I am actually concerned. There is so much more that can be done in order to treat the planet better. Malls should be required to have recycling centers for all types of recyclable materials and businesses should be required to recycle what they can. Maybe a fine can even be put in place to secure their participation in the initiative. When I think of how much plastic can be saved from going into landfills, I wonder why they haven’t already started recycling it. It is really ridiculous that it is 2015, people know the benefits of recycling and all the good it could do to our planet, and they still aren’t doing it. For some stores energy conservation is a little bit hard. Obviously a frozen yogurt store can’t shutdown their yogurt machines and freezers, but maybe they can try and get energy-saving machines instead.
I get that businesses need to make money and will prioritize the success of their business over other things. It is a competitive world out there. But if all the businesses gathered together and decided to make just a few small changes, they could make a huge difference to the planet.