Estate Planning of our Natural Resources

In these turbulent days of economic uncertainty we’re now witnessing the tanking of American auto industries. People are holding their breath to see if politicians will infuse money into the industry that didn’t plan for the future and now wants tax payer money from the government.

A good many “average Americans” can tell politicians where the auto industry went wrong. Those in charge didn’t plan for the future and they didn’t conserve their assets. In short, they did a crappy job with their “estate planning”. They spent money where they didn’t have a surplus and they didn’t invest in cleaner technologies when they had the chance. Now that the price of gas has risen and people are shying away from gas-guzzling vehicles, auto execs are pointing their fingers at the mortgage crisis instead of realizing that high gas prices are here to stay, and everyone in the room has already seen the writing on the wall.

We can shake a finger at them all we want, but maybe it’s time for a hard look at our own “spending” habits. Spending is when a resource is used for the procurement of something, either before or after the fact of acquiring it.

When plastic bags were first manufactured, they were heralded because they stopped us from using another resource; paper. We were able to save millions of pounds of paper each year by switching to plastic. The process of making paper bags is indeed worse for the environment in terms of natural resources used.

We’ve rested on our laurels long enough. History shows us that we went from carrying baskets to market to put groceries or other bought items in. This morphed into using paper bags and what a convenience they were. Paper bags created an unheard of convenience for the consumer, allowing people to quickly dash into a store for an item instead of planning a shopping trip.

Then plastic bags were born. They were lighter and easier to carry than paper. Fewer items could be put into them and more plastic bags were used per capita, annually, than paper bags.

Spending our assets, our money, on the creation, distribution, collection, recycling, and environmental clean-up of plastic bags is a waste of money. It’s a waste of resources, a waste of technology, and clearly shows that we’re not looking for better solutions to our problem of moving bought items from one location to another.

A better, less resource-intensive solution to our problem of moving items from one place to another is to use reusable bags or baskets. How does this preserve our assets and foster “estate planning”? It allows us to become “zero waste” in terms of reducing our dependence on a convenience product, plastic bags that can be easily replaced.

Let’s plan for the future and not be caught off guard like the auto industries. We can see oil prices rising, food prices rising, and energy costs soaring. Plastic bags are made from the same expensive, non-renewable resource. By reducing usage of an item that can easily be replaced with reusable bags, we’re conserving petroleum for other, more important uses, like energy.

Let’s do a little “estate planning” of our resources by switching to reusable bags.