Recycling

“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” -–Mahatma Gandhi

"Like a shadow that does not permit us to jump over it, but moves with us to maintain its proper distance, pollution is nature's answer to culture. When we have learned to recycle pollution into potent information, we will have passed over completely into the new cultural ecology." ---William Irwin Thompson

In a perfect world, I would not have to throw away anything at all.

I would not cook or buy more food than I could eat. The parts of the food that I could not digest, like coffee grounds and eggshells, would be lovingly placed in the compost pile that resides next to my meticulously tended garden in the backyard. Everything that I purchased would either be reusable, recyclable, or completely biodegradable. I would not need a car because I would rely on my legs, my bike, and/or my city’s superbly run public transportation system. In a perfect world, everyone would think that this behavior was perfectly normal and that anyone who deviated from these practices was unnecessarily wasteful.

Our reality, however, is far from perfect and, as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t even live up to my own lofty ideals.

I do incorporate some small energy/earth saving measures into my every day life like turning off unused lights and appliances, not buying disposable plates & cutlery, and using public transportation when possible, but I feel like I could be doing so much more. For example it’s hard for me to resist the lure of individualized packaging. Intellectually, I know that it would be better for me to go for the family/economy sized packaging, but smaller sized bags of chips, bottles of water or packs of facial tissue look cuter and just seem more convenient. And I think that’s the problem, I have to train myself to sacrifice a bit of convenience for the “greater good”.

I'm going to try an experiment for the next two weeks to see if I can live without so much waste. In addition to buying less overall (my bank account is shouting out "Hallelujah!" right now), I'm going to choose the more environmentally conscious option when I can. So instead of plastic, I'll choose cloth and instead of buying bottled water/sodas/juice at work, I'll bring my own from home. I also will try to choose products that can be bought in bulk and easily recycled. We'll see how it goes...

On a related note, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this book in my local bookstore:

Re-bound, written by Jeannine Stein, features a variety of notebooks, organizers, journals and photo albums that can be made from everyday items that you have lying around your house. I can't wait to dust off my decrepit sewing machine and try out one of these projects. The Potato-Chip Double-Sided Notebook is calling my name.