Living in the present moment?

Tricycle quotes Thich Nhat Hanh as follows.

When we throw a banana peel into the garbage, if we are mindful, we know that the peel will become compost and be reborn as a tomato or a lettuce salad in just a few months. But when we throw a plastic bag into the garbage, thanks to our awareness, we know that a plastic bag will not become a tomato or a salad very quickly. Some kinds of garbage need four or five hundred years to decompose. Nuclear waste needs a quarter of a million years before it stops being harmful and returns to the soil. Living in the present moment in an awakened way, looking after the present moment with all our heart, we will not do things which destroy the future. That is the most concrete way to do what is constructive for the future.

It seems to me that it takes an awful lot of conceptualization to know "that [a banana] peel will become compost and be reborn as a tomato or a lettuce salad in just a few months [but that nuclear] waste needs a quarter of a million years before it stops being harmful and returns to the soil." It may be important to know these things, but I don't see how knowing them can be equated with "living in the present moment."

What did Thich Nhat Hanh have in mind when he said, "Living in the present moment in an awakened way, looking after the present moment with all our heart, we will not do things which destroy the future?" What specifically is it that we will not do in the present moment with respect to nuclear waste when we live in the present moment?