Living Smart

II ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY 058 059 They drive people to abandon their polluting behavior mainly out of self-interest – their own interest in avoiding sanctions, rather than their obligation to pursue the common good of environmental protection. Such motivations are certainly not enough to fundamentally change people’ s attitudes, nor can they alleviate the pressure on our landfills. Latest official figures have shown the amount of municipal solid waste we sent to landfills in 2017 still saw an increase of 3.7 percent compared to 2016. While the implementation of the proposed waste- disposal levy may help address our imminent landfill problem, to ensure sustainable compliance, why don’ t we start working on people’ s attitudes? The key is to make people realize it is their moral obligation to cut down on waste, regardless of whether a charging system is in place. People will then see waste reduction as not merely a rational response to waste charging but also a reasonable moral duty to the environment. Only in this way can we worry less about compliance. Our government has recently launched a number of campaigns to raise the public awareness of waste reduction and recycling – with the “Big Waster” mascot seeming to have won the hearts of many people in town. This is indeed a good place to start. But in the long run, we need to go beyond mere publicity and educate people more systematically on the ethics of waste reduction and, more broadly, our moral relationships with future generations and nature. Published on January 16, 2019