The Energy Industry

Photo credit: Damien Ch'ng

 



There is indisputable proof that energy drinks don’t work.  The evidence is along both shoulders of any road you walk down.  How else can you explain people gulping 16 or 20 ounces of liquefied energy and still having too little energy to drop the empty can in the trash?  They can just barely drag the .57 ounce of heavy aluminum to the open vehicle window and shove it out.  Twenty-percent of all energy consumed is used to power the brain, more than any other organ of the body.  If there was really any energy in that drink, the consumer would suddenly have the brain power needed to remember that there are garbage containers by the pumps of every gas station, by the doors of nearly every convenience store, a half-dozen around every fast food restaurant, lining the sidewalks of every town, and inside every store and office. Before reaching home, they will undoubtedly pass a hundred or more half-empty garbage cans.  When they arrive home, they will probably even find one or more trash cans there.  So why does the road shoulder or ditch seem to be the smartest place to leave that empty can or bottle?

One day's collection from a short walk around town.  Amidst the

pile of soda and beer cans are a large percentage of "energy" cans

with all their energy gone to waste.

 

We need to think more about trash, and more about how we properly dispose of it.  Maybe part of the problem with roadside littering, besides laziness and stupidity, is the assumption that “out of sight, out of mind.”  While the litter does seem to blur a bit the faster we drive, it’s still there.  It’s there at least until the wind and rain force it into the ditch, flush it into the nearby stream, creek, river, bay and ocean, where it kills birds, pollutes fish, poisons bottom vegetation, and otherwise destroys the beauty of nature and all it touches.  It doesn’t decay and disappear.  Most of it continues to destroy everything it surrounds for decades, and some of it, forever.  If nothing else, it enters the food chain and returns to us as poison to give cancer to us and our children.  How is this a good idea?