There is no "away." ... In natural ecosystems, in particular, you can move something from one place to another, you can transform it into something else, but you can't get rid of it. As long as it is on the Earth, it is part of the global ecosystem. The industrial poisons, pollutants, insecticides, and radioactive materials that we've tried to "throw away" in the past have all too often come back to haunt us because people didn't understand this rule.
A lot of the people and problems ... came about because people haven’t yet given up on the naive fantasy that there is, in fact, an "away." We can send the brown and black folks "away," and that'll fix it. We can put criminals "away" in jail, and the things they learn there will never touch us. We can send our pollution "away" down the stream, where only the orcas will choke on it. We get in a lot of trouble when we overestimate the size of this tiny blue ball, and start to thinking that there's anywhere on it that's far enough "away" to hide our crimes against nature and each other.
Kauffman's Rules, 1-7
Out of sight, out of mind, in other words. So often, I've felt the urge to remind people that when they throw something away, or otherwise try to move a problem elsewhere, they're only moving it elsewhere, not fixing it. Sometimes, that's the only practical option, of course, but you can't just forget about it.
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