Austria trained me well: I have sorted my trash for years. Different bins, bags, and trips to various containers.
Then I arrived in Palermo, Italy.
Everything went into one pile. It felt like a mix between a landfill and a comment on how individual effort can seem pointless.
The difference is more than how things look. It’s about the whole system. Turin, a city a few hours north, has one of Italy’s most advanced waste-to-energy plants called TRM. It processes hundreds of thousands of tons each year and produces 350,000 MWh of electricity. Sorting waste is almost like a rule of God there.
Palermo and Turin are both in Italy, but their systems are completely different.
This highlights how personal habits connect to larger systems. My careful recycling only works if the system can handle it. Microplastics, now found in our blood, soil, and air, didn’t show up because people sorted things wrong. They’re here because the system was built for quick profit, not long-term health.
Financial markets do not price pollution; the focus is on short-term profit. Companies do not pay for the health costs their waste creates.
The externalities, worth trillions, will keep getting distributed across everyone else. Unless the internal approach within markets and organizations changes.
Individual habits matter. They are also insufficient on their own.
Yours truly,
Irina
💭 If the inner piece made sense, the outer dynamics become much easier to change↗.