Some of the first questions you may ask yourself when you first move into a new neighborhood include: when is trash day? What trash will be taken? Is there a town transfer station? What do I do with my batteries or glass?

If you are like me, 2020 will have been the first year you have ever had to personally consider those questions. Like many other current college students, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced me to adapt to a semester away from campus. I have been fortunate to live in an off-campus house with friends, but that has meant a transition to a level of household responsibility that I have not previously known. We missed trash day twice and have worried about recycling the wrong things and causing it all to be thrown away.

But what if that fear, around the dreaded possibility of having our recycling thrown out, is misplaced? I believe that to a large extent, it is.

Writing that sentence feels like signing a document stating that I personally hope that the world meets with unimaginable climate disaster. But why? The answer lies in what has been called the “individualization of responsibility.” As Michael Maniates explains in a 2001 journal article on the topic, I feel such guilt about proposing to care less about recycling because our culture’s response to environmental problems has been to focus on what the individual can do. Recycle your reusables, consume less, sell your car, and feel shame when you don’t do these things because sea level rise is your fault.

Except it’s not. According to a 2015 video from the group Films for Action titled “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change does not Equal Political Change,” all municipal waste accounted for about 3% of total waste production in the United States for the year 2005. That means if everyone was a perfect recycler, never drove, and didn’t use oil our national emissions would drop only a few percentage points.

That’s a hard pill to swallow. But it’s an important reality to recognize at the end of a year that has been so hard because it means we can go a little bit easier on ourselves. We can turn down the panic for just this once and realize that the overwhelming majority of the blame for our country’s emissions does not rest on our shoulders. It is the result of a system of endless economic growth which seeks to hide behind the tiny fraction of emissions that individuals are responsible for.

Now, I am not saying that sustainable actions are bad or useless. I try my best to be conscious of my carbon footprint and love to compost. But I keep it all in perspective. I am not under the illusion that if I fail to do those things that I will be personally responsible for the increasingly mild winters here in Maine.

I think we could all benefit from this perspective shift. We should be environmentally conscious about our individual actions but not fanatical. We should realize that real progress will come from changes largely outside of our control. And finally, at the end of this long year, we should be able to set out our trash without worrying if we sorted the recycling correctly. We’ve had

enough to worry about this year, let’s enjoy its final days with a clear conscious that knows how to keep everything in perspective.

Andrew Meredith is an Environmental Studies and English Major at Bowdoin College.

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