We’re all Wasted

The world is warming, the Gulf of Mexico has magically turned from water to oil, and a wad of plastic trash the size of Texas floats in the Pacific Ocean. Who can we turn to in this time of human driven environmental and ecological destruction? Say goodbye to the gulf coast and baby sea turtles but hello to Wa$ted! a show airing on Planet Green and hosted by Annabelle Gurwich. The show features a 'wasteful' group of people, usually a family, living an environmentally carefree and ecologically oblivious life while leaving tons of trash and gallons of burned gasoline in their wake. Gurwich is tasked with reforming the prodigal home and educating them on the errors of their ways. The catch of course is that the families good behavior will be rewarded with a cash reward equivalent to all the money they have saved by becoming sustainable.

WA$TED! Trailer 3 (2008) - The most amazing home videos are here

In this way the show creates a metaphor for sustainability sorely missing from much of the current environmental dialogue. To live what has now been labeled a ‘green’ life, is to live economically, soundly within your means, and Wa$ted does a good job illustrating this. So much of the waste encountered on the show is completely superfluous and not needed or necessarily wanted by the family at all. Once the waste has been done away with, either through simple guidelines or a new technology provided by the host, the family can visibly see the money that they have been ‘throwing away’ all this time. Their winnings are presented at the end in a trashcan to highlight how the families' waste is simply money being thrown away .

One of the problems with our throw away culture is that we have no idea the kind of externalities our lifestyle produces. Of course we can't all be expected to live the Thoreauvian way of life but to continue to live how we do isn't just greedy, its immoral. Just how avariciously we consume is exposed through the excellently titled 'earth calculator'. The Earth calculator shows how many Earth’s would be needed if the world was made up of people who consumed at a similar rate as the respective contestants on Wa$ted. The number of Earths is tellingly more often than not, more than ten.

In an era where the future is not only becoming quickly unaffordable but also inhospitable and impractical, it’s important that what we need to survive is not the next technology, but the next great metaphor and this is what Wa$ted provides. Although it isn't explicitly educational, and rarely gives proper context, it provides a good way to tell people just how bad things are, and that we are largely responsible. Responsibility and accountability are the most overlooked aspects of the necessary actions needed to save not just our species, but the world as we know it, and Wa$ted should be commended for educing this for us.