Doing Global Math

This is my bowl of empty prescription bottles. That's not how many prescriptions I use, by the way. I have only two prescriptions that I refill every month. I have been trying to take the bottles back to get them refilled each month rather than get new bottles each time. As you can see, I'm not always successful. Does it really matter? Some people want us all to think that little tiny changes will make no positive impact on the environment. I mean, really, just look at how tiny those bottles are. They can't take up too much room in a landfill, can they? Besides, I only get two new bottles every month, that's not much waste to put into my garbage can.

Surely the only way to make change is to tackle the giants like corporations, or commuters, or population control, or the use of private jets...

I think we need a little math to get at the answer here. First of all, there are 303,201,560 people in the US right now. Of that number, about 40% of those people take prescription drugs. There is really no way to estimate how many months or years each prescription is taken. Let's just look at the minimum number of prescription bottles that are thrown out each year. This 40% is the number of people taking at least one prescription, however, 1 in 6 Americans are taking at least three prescription drugs. So if we stick to the number of people taking just one, our answer will be conservative.

121,280,624 people are taking at least one prescription right now. Most prescriptions are refilled on a monthly basis. So that means that every year at least 1,455,367,488 plastic prescription bottles are being thrown away. So, call me crazy*, but do almost 1.5 billion plastic bottles make no impact? That could fill up my house. That would fill up my whole yard.


Environmental issues are finally becoming mainstream and the more it enters the consciousness of the average American, the more power we have as a population to make big changes with small actions. Most things you do in your life such as drinking a plastic bottle of soda a day is something at least a million other people are also doing. So when you throw away (or recycle) that bottle, it's not just you, it's at least a million other people who are (or could be) making the same choice as you. Send a million bottles to the recycling center, or to the landfill?

Recycling is the first and easiest remedy to dealing with waste. But even recycling takes up resources and has an environmental impact. The great thing about it is that on a large level, recycling is the reuse of materials we've already made commercially and insisting on good recycling programs throughout the country gives us (or Japan, as the case mostly is) the opportunity to reuse waste. Recycling is good.

Reusing is even better. When you can reuse something again and again you prolong the period of time before an object finds itself in the trash. It takes some creativity to start implementing the reuse of things that formerly would have landed in the recycle bin, but if you lack the inspiration there are a ton of blogs and magazines that are focusing on projects that reuse things we already have in our homes.

This is where my prescription bottles come in. If I have only four bottles, two for holding this months pills, and two to send to the pharmacist to get the next month's refill, and I don't forget to bring my old bottles down to be refilled I could avoid consuming (and wasting) 24 plastic bottles a year. (Plastic bottles that aren't recyclable in my town- FOR SHAME YAMHILL COUNTY!!!!!) I won't likely stop needing medications over the next 20 years (more likely I'll have to add to them as I age) so just right there I could be keeping 480 little plastic bottles from ending up in the landfill. And all I have to do is remember to bring the bottles with me to the shop.

An exercise in living consciously.

The message for today is: don't let anyone belittle the changes you're making. Don't believe anyone who tries to make you believe that the little changes don't count.




Note: I spent the morning looking up statistics on populations and "health care" in this country and I invite you to look up some information too; National Center For Health Statistics, Demography Of The United States, US Population Clock.

*Go ahead, I do it all the time.