It's the Environment, Stupid.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Waste in the name of national security
















Not to make light of the situation, but are all of these plastic containers really going to be simply thrown away?

If you haven't heard, there's been a reported thwarted terrorist attack, and now airlines are banning nearly EVERYTHING from carryons - specifically liquids (ie. water, shampoo, lotions).

That adds up to a lot of little plastic bottles that are headed to landfills sooner than expected. I'd love to see some kind of redistribution of the usable items to places like women's and homeless shelters. Or even a collective effort to recycle the sheer number of water bottles that are being tossed, after all they're all being collected in one place - security check points.

Of course the restrictive measures are in the ever popular name of national security - but we mustn't overlook one obvious externality of the situation - tons of additional plastic/waste headed to the landfills, not to mention the additional consumer purchasing that'll go to replacing these items.

Photo from AP via Yahoo.

1 Comments:

  • Good to know I wasn't the only one thinking that when I saw all those containers being collected on the news. Part of me wanted to drive to my local airport and dig them all out of the trash.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 16:05  

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