Recycling is for Peasants

When did protecting the environment become a job for everyone except the people destroying it?

While we’re invited to rinse jars and carry reusable bags, while we’re taught to demonize plastic straws and fast fashion in the name of saving the planet, ninety private jets descend on Venice so that 250 rich people can enjoy the wedding of one of the richest men on the planet.

Environmental virtue, it seems, has become a moral obligation only for the lower classes, while the rich live in a completely different ethical reality.

For the sake of this argument, let’s divide the world into two rough categories ¹: “normal people” who, while not necessarily struggling to make ends meet, still have to go to work to pay the bills, and those we might be inclined to call the “elite”: private jet and mega-yacht owners, who seem to be completely free of moral obligations. Though “filthy rich”–emphasis on the filthy–seems more accurate.

The term environmentally friendly is constantly tossed around, urging people to make choices that are good for the planet. We learn about global warming and pollution at school, and are shown videos of turtles chocking on plastic bags and taught that single-use plastics are the enemy. We’re taught to believe that saving the planet is as simple as bringing a reusable bag to the store and carefully sorting our trash, and that real change can be made in the world if only we drank from bucatini pasta rather than plastic straws. 

We average citizens are expected to be ethical and responsible consumers, and our morality is reflected in the choices we make: buying second hand, reusing jars, carpooling, etc. I’m not claiming to speak for all “normal people”–there are undoubtedly plenty who don’t care about recycling, continue to buy fast fashion and still prefer plastic straws that don’t disintegrate in their sodas. But some of us genuinely care about the environment and act according to these values. And the choice to act in conscious ways is often framed as a personal moral decision. 

In this sense, the moral responsibility that guides people toward one action or another is not conditional: their choices don’t depend on what the rest of the world does, but on how much they believe in their own values, and I think there’s a certain dignity that comes with acting ethically even when the rest of the world has gone to hell.
If moral responsibility is a personal sentiment, then people try to do what’s right regardless of how hopeless or hypocritical everything else is: they act morally because they believe that even small actions have positive consequences. And so we each tend to our own garden, even if it is surrounded by a wasteland. Even if the filthy rich use their private jets to go to brunch, we still feel the duty to do what we think is right.

But is it even possible to be ethical in a system that makes our efforts meaningless? Morality shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, and when only some people are expected to act responsibly, then those efforts feel useless. 

In other words, we––average people––recycle, use paper straws and reusable bottles. And we do it because we’ve been taught that it matters, and we still believe that the planet is worth protecting. For those who care, things like riding a bike and repurposing old jars don’t feel like sacrifices, but rather, they feel like obvious choices ².

Though sometimes, these things aren’t really choices at all. We are constantly being pushed, guilted and regulated into making “environmentally friendly” choices, if not forced to. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing is being asked of the people doing the actual damage.
Why is there regulation for us, and not for them? Why are we the ones who are constantly pushed towards “sustainable” choices, while the people who could make real changes (and who cause a lot of damage in the first place) are allowed to do whatever they want?

Take Italy, for example: environmental regulations in Italy restrict certain (old) cars from circulating in urban areas. The idea, of course, is to push people towards buying newer (or electric) models with a lower carbon footprint. And even if these laws are inspired by good, green intentions, the reality is that normal people are being punished for not being rich.

The reality is that people who rely on their 15-year-old car to get to work, who can’t afford to buy a new car, are being treated as if they are the problem. Your old car can’t enter the city, but again, 90 private jets can land in it. We can look past the damage to the environment if it means a few hundred (rich) people can enjoy a three-day wedding as though the world was their own private playground. 

Pollution is only treated as a problem when it is caused by people who may not have another choice.

Why are we–the ones who may or may not be struggling, but who certainly don’t have yachts or private jets–the ones being pressured and legislated into a certain lifestyle? Why are we told to eat less meat and drink from paper straws, while the filthy rich–who are absolutely not struggling–continue to do as they please?
Are average people eating in fast food restaurants and buying cheap clothes really the problem?  Or is it the unchecked emissions of the ultra-wealthy?

This isn’t just a matter of absurd double standards. It is the creation of two moral realities: one where ordinary people are held responsible for their emissions, and another where wealth grants you moral immunity. The moral pressure to be good eco-citizens is directed downward onto people who have little to do with the destruction that is taking place, rather than upwards, where it might actually matter.
Power (read: money) decides who gets regulated and who gets to do whatever the hell they want. 

The problem is not that we’re forced to recycle. The problem is those that actually have the means and the power to make real change are held completely unaccountable. Responsibility is dumped onto those with the least power and the least blame.
We’re being held responsible for a problem that we didn’t cause, and that we cannot solve, while the people who can are too rich to be told what to do.

If ethics only apply to the powerless, then they are not ethics at all.

1. Normally, I would avoid these oversimplifications and broad categories that lump together people with nothing in common, and there are certainly exceptions to both categories, but that is not the point of this argument.  ↩︎
2. Again, for those who care–remember how mad some people were about paper straws and non-detachable bottle caps?  ↩︎