The End is Near

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Adam

A Waste of Waste

I’m having trouble understanding ex-Vice President Al Gore’s views on global warming. Don’t get me wrong; I loved An Inconvenient Truth despite my utter hatred for PowerPoint slides. I just don’t understand if things are as bad as he says they are.

This far north of the Mason-Dixon line didn’t get a White Christmas in 2011, but is global warming to blame? I find the weather extremely foreboding when I can regularly see 40-degree temperatures in the forecast. Iowa is not supposed to be this warm and cozy this time of year. I want snow, ice warnings. I want blizzards that should cancel school at Iowa State University where I’m finishing up my classes but they don’t because pedestrians are more easily mobile than cars in a white out. I’m more than grateful for sunshine any day of the week, but I want white cover everything.

I’m a citizen of the Northern United States by choice. All my life, my ideal destinations and dream homes all reside in places that experience all four seasons each year (exception being Las Vegas). When I graduated high school and joined the Air Force, I strived to get stationed in Europe, where I could experience a bitter cold morning in London or the inclement weather of Berlin. I ended up in Montana, a beautiful state for portions, and an otherwise wasteland for the rest.

Montana taught me about Chinook winds the hard way. Over the three years I resided in Great Falls, I learned that a wind chill from the north could freeze the warmest of souls. The dry cold was like a meat locker, cold but sterile on the skin. It felt that anything that didn’t belong would be wiped out by the Darwinist weather of Montana winters.

Since I’ve moved back to the Hawkeye state four years ago, I’ve seen the weather treat us inconsistently. On the one snow day in my four years at Iowa State, the snow had dropped loads close to 20 inches in the course of a night. Since I was one not to take inclement conditions lightly, I dressed appropriately and ventured off into the fresh powder. I only traveled half a mile to the local video store, but I had to blaze my own trail. My footprints over a foot deep, I plodded and heaved my sweaty body over the mounds and piles of snow to rent a movie with the actual guise of experiencing the winter first hand. It’s now January and I have yet to a single inclement day of weather this whole damn season. It’s making me more anxious than sliding into a telephone pole in my car.

Each year around Earth Day, VP Al Gore, like a social responsible groundhog, peeks out his head and reminds us of the impending doom that is the polar icecaps coming to flood every ocean. I’m surprised clips from Waterworld are not integrated into his doomsday scenarios. He needs Kevin Costner now more than ever.

One aspect of the greenhouse gas emissions VP Gore talks about comes from waste and sewage dumps. We are all encouraged to lessen or eliminate our carbon footprint by recycling everything we can. Paper, plastic, Nicolas Cage’s acting, and glass are used and used until we have nothing left to throw away besides the copy of Bangkok Dangerous we got for Christmas from that relative who doesn’t know you at all. You know, the estranged-relative-present to fake actual interest. Negligence at it’s most festive.

When I lived in Montana, recycling wasn’t done all that often. The thinking of covering Big Sky country in shit and garbage wasn’t such a tacky proposition for the residents. It doesn’t end up there people. Don’t believe me; look up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and apparently in the Atlantic Ocean too, all the discard ropes and waste finds it’s way to this island of literal garbage. The dimensions may vary in area, but the sizes in measure in acres. Acres, the equivalent of a city block each, covering the ocean surface with all the things we are too lazy to reuse or properly rid ourselves of. The biggest offenders? Probably the same people who pee in public pools. It’s the same offense basically.

With all the opportunities to recycle in Iowa’s capital, some neighboring cities are noticeably lax in keeping being green options in residential areas. In Ames, just a thirty-minute drive north of Des Moines, Iowa’s capital and largest city, has very little in the way of recycling. If it is there, I haven’t seen it. I’ve lived in Ames for the better part of three years and my apartment has never had a recycling option or information on where one is locally located. This lack of options has made my recycling almost non-existent. I admit, I’m far from the most ecofriendly personality, but I do a good job of not littering and I use public transportation to get to class and reuse printer paper when I can, so I’m not a complete wastetoid. I know I’m a bit of a hypocrite sometimes, that’s why I’m not forcing the idea of recycling on you fine people. Despite my lack of reusing bottles and paper, Iowa State University has done a great job of keeping places for recycling bottles and paper in any area in which a lot of traffic exists. I take advantage when I can.

The reason I found myself talking on this subject is due to my memory. When I moved to my new place in April, I established a Wi-Fi network for my computer and applicable devices so that I wasn’t having to haul my computer on to campus every time I wanted to update my blog or send an email. I did a little research and ended up picking CenturyLink for my Internet provider. CenturyLink, fresh off of acquiring Qwest just a few days around me signing up, gave me a competitive price and came out and made sure my router was properly installed and ready to transmit. Since joining them, I have had no complaints about the service they have provided.

I saw my memory is the reason because I started getting déjà vu when I opened my mail every other week or so. Each time, a simple letter would come through the mail with a green header that enticed me to further my commitment to CenturyLink. After discarding at least three of these letters, I began to keep them to see just how often they would send me these junk letters. This is how many I have right now.

I don’t understand why CenturyLink would waste so much money on sending me about 10 letters requesting the exact same thing. It may look like these are all the same, but if you can magnify it enough; you’ll see that the code above the address is different for all of them.

So, as a loyal and appreciative customer of CenturyLink, I want to thank them for the ability to post this essay on my blog so I can post this to everyone I can reach via social media outlets Facebook, Twitter, etc.

CenturyLink, please stop sending me these f***ing letters that I will continue to collect to monitor the success of this blog post. I understand the bottom line on this type of mailer isn’t something to worry about, but the public relation fiasco of showing that you are needlessly sending customers advertisers is going to hurt. These ads need to be geared towards gaining new customers, not flooding your existing consumers with paper they don’t need and won’t read. One, maybe even two, is a forgivable and respectable effort. But receiving 10 copies of the same piece of paper is extremely wasteful.

As an advertising and public relations major, I understand the foolish nature of ignoring the ecosystem and the impact of wasteful practices on the future of our planet. Come up with a more cost effective, and more importantly socially aware, means of advertising your products and services. We aren’t perfect, and you aren’t either. Fix it, or risk losing my business and everyone else’s I can get this piece to.

Vice President Al Gore wouldn’t appreciate this, especially when you consider the magnitude of the issue. Being a publicly traded company with customers in multiple regions, the statistics of this issue are massive. If each of these 10 copies cost just $.30 to make a piece, we’re looking at almost $3 wasted on every one of your customers.

According to your website, you list that you have amounts of over 15 million access lines in the United States currently. If everyone of your customers received the same number of letters as I did, that is $4.5 million spent on a simple letter, sent repeatedly. In a global economy that finds both people and companies trying to stretch the dollar as far as they can, this doesn’t seem very productive.

I’m fully aware of the David vs. Goliath argument I’ve just created, but understand this: in a world where news is instant and people are more interconnected than ever, how many times do I have to send this until this reaches everywhere. The answer: not many.

If you are a customer of CenturyLink or anyone with a voice on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment. I only ask that you keep it respectful. Thank you.