So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about myself as a consumer.

By “consumer,” I don’t mean the dork in the socks and sandals who goes grocery shopping at Safeway at 10:45 p.m. while really high. (Bad idea, by the way, unless you want to end up with an eight-pound bag of candied apricots and six containers of rainbow sprinkles.)

Rather, I mean “consumer” in the more literal sense of the word.

As a member of our wonderful society, I personally consume a lot of resources and, in doing so, create a butt-load of waste on a daily basis.

Now, before all of you goddamn hippies get excited, I want you to know that this is not going to be an article about how to reduce the amount of waste we produce. If Al Gore has taught us anything, it’s that it’s far too late to change the irreparable damage we’ve done to our planet.

The save-the-world ship has not only sailed, but it’s sunk, and the bones of its crew members have been picked completely clean by the ravenous fish of ever-growing industry.

At the time Gore made his smug and preachy little movie, he said that if we didn’t do anything soon, it would be too late. Well, we didn’t do anything, so now it’s too late.

Thanks, Mr. Gore. At least now we can move on.

Therefore, what I’ve been thinking about is not how we can create less waste, but rather how we can create this waste more efficiently. In other words, how can I create the same amount of waste I do now, but with way less effort?

“ Instead of using oil to create fuel for our cars, we could just dump it straight into the wild. If for some reason it doesn’t kill as much nature as we’d hoped, we can just start punching baby fauns in the face

The answer is simple: By cutting out myself as the middleman.

An example to help illustrate what I mean: Yesterday, I woke up before school and made a sandwich. At lunch, I ate that sandwich, and then spent the evening digesting it to turn it into poop.

Despite what you think, my body had to work pretty damn hard to turn that sandwich into poop. It’s not as easy as you might think to turn things into poop. If you don’t believe me, then try turning food into poop without eating it. Sure, maybe David Blaine could do it, but those of us who aren’t blessed with the gifts of magic or wizardry don’t have the skills to do something that complex.

What I’m getting at is, instead of wasting all that time and energy turning food into poop, why don’t I simply take the food and throw it directly into the toilet, thereby saving myself a lot of work and effort?

The same applies to everything we consume. Instead of using oil to create fuel for our cars, we could just dump it straight into the wild. If for some reason it doesn’t kill as much nature as we’d hoped, we can just start punching baby fauns in the face.

Calm down hippies, it’s just a suggestion.

J.Williamez is a devout conservationist … of his own time and effort.

Published in Volume 65, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 9, 2010)