Waste not

I’m going to revisit yet something else from my most recent trip. On my flight out through Seatac (first thing in the morning), I stopped in the food court to have an idiotic sweetened bread product (something I usually wouldn’t do). 

The tables in the food court all had these gigantic circular stickers on them devoted to Seatac’s waste disposal programs. Like so many public institutions in the Northwest, Seatac has jumped fully on the bandwagon of confusing patrons with separate bins for food scraps, mixed paper, plastics, metal, glass, scrap lumber, volatile solvents and oils, burned-out refrigerator compressors, ammunition casings, cigarette butts, and used syringes. Anything not included in those categories is meant to be thrown in a bin vaguely labeled, “Waste.”

The point, anyway is that Seatac is going to great lengths to soothe the guilty consciences of upper-middle-class white consumers, and these circular table stickers were there to help said consumers (and also Seatac) congratulate themselves for their efforts. The circle was divided into thirds: one green, devoted to compostables; one blue, devoted to recyclables; and one gray, devoted to the “other” stuff that gets thrown in a landfill. 

In the green section was this header: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Composts!” Fair enough. 

In the blue section: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Recycles!” Okay.

And the gray section: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Reduces Waste!” Huh.

You’ll notice the last one deviates stylistically from the theme established in numbers one and two. They go from using an intransitive verb in the first two to using a transitive verb and direct object in number three. Composts. Recycles. Reduces Waste. One of these things is not like the others.

In the first two, they are telling you exactly what Seatac does with what is placed in the respective bin. Put a banana peel in the green bin. Seatac composts it. Put a pop can in the blue bin. Seatac recycles it. 

Try that same sentence construction with number three. Put a styrofoam codpiece in the gray bin. Seatac reduces waste it. Doesn’t work.

What I’m getting at is that if Seatac wants to be honest, they need to change that header in the gray section. It ought to read, “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Wastes!” Because that’s what they do with the stuff in the gray bin. They waste it. 

There’s no “reducing” involved in the gray bin. Seatac as a whole may be producing less landfill-fodder, but the waste reduction happens as a byproduct of what happens in the blue bin and the green bin. When you toss something in the gray bin, you (and Seatac) are not reducing waste. You’re just wasting, and it’s deceitful of the information sticker to imply otherwise.

I’m not trying to cast moral aspersions on Seatac for wasting a lot. I don’t care about that part, since we all waste a lot. What bothers me is just their circumlocution regarding it. They want to self-righteously pat themselves on the back for their recycling and composting, but they have to put a linguistic spin on their landfilling to make it more palatable. 

They’re stuck in a position of not being able to brag about the positive without simultaneously revealing the (much larger) negative. So they cleverly evade the question, and everyone feels a little bit happier knowing their airport is making a difference. 

Of course, I’m probably the only pathetic loser who’s taken the time to actually read that sticker.