What Does “Going Green” Really Mean? (Part 7)

Reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s the mantra you’ve likely read and heard many, many times — so many times that you may have forgotten the various responsibilities involved. If we take the individual parts of this green mantra and turn it into an equation, we’ll have something like reuse + recycle = reduce. But what interests me more, what inspires in me a deeper kind of questioning with regards to my relationship to the Earth, is this: Is recycle > or < reuse?

The term “recycling” is a bit tricky. It is commonly understood that to recycle is to alter the form of waste in order to reuse it. When we dump our recyclable waste into private or public “recycling” bins, we probably have thought (myself included) “I’m recycling”. We may have congratulated ourselves and returned to our daily lives with a certain sense of accomplishment (myself included). But according to the above definition, we’re not recycling — we’re simply (and hopefully) separating recyclable waste from unrecyclable waste and handing it over to those who (hopefully) will recycle the waste themselves.

But here is a more substantial fact: The actual transformation of waste into something reusable depends on the creation of waste. Recycling, ultimately, does not prevent waste; it perpetuates it. Yes, recycling is obviously better than not recycling at all. But what is better than recycling? I argue the answer can be found in reusing — as well as in reusing’s kissing cousin: precycling.

To reuse is essentially a very simple concept: Wash it, mend it, whatever — keep it in reusable condition and keep using it. That glass jar that previously contained the peanut butter for your milkshake? Wash it and reuse it to hold your spices, seeds or grains (had any quinoa lately)? That shirt of which you’ve grown bored? Put it away or loan it away, give it some distance; chances are you’ll learn to appreciate it again. Thrift stores and charity shops are still resources for high-quality and inexpensive clothing, furniture, and countless other things looking for new homes. Need a candle holder? Eat your quinoa and reuse the glass jar.

As I’m sure you’ve heard a million times: If it ain’t broken, don’t throw it away. I would add: If it’s broken and you can fix it, don’t throw it away. Which begs another question: How much stuff do you have? Do you need all of it? Can someone else reuse something of yours that you are not reusing and have no plans to reuse? Consider donating it to a charity, to a family, to an individual.

Reuse = waste prevention. The simplicity and truth of this equation can be transformational.

To precycle means to make some mindful decisions before you consume in order to prevent waste. Take the issue of packaging, for example. When you buy a pound of raisins that are pre-packaged, you are perpetuating waste rather than preventing it. But if you take your own bag or container to a store that sells raisins in bulk, and you reuse that same bag or container the next time you want to buy raisins (or something else), then you are lessening the demand for the waste that is the packaging in which most things are sold. You are rendering that packaging absolutely unnecessary. Some packaging is recyclable, and some is not. But don’t forget that packaging is still waste, whether its recyclable or not. To precycle, in other words, is to make decisions that enable you to avoid recycling and, in turn, waste in the first place. Perhaps you’ve seen public advertisements, social marketing, that encourages you to starve your garbage can or bin, the illustration of an empty, hungry, evil garbage can pleading for waste. I say starve your recycling bin, too.

If you need a soundtrack for your efforts, try Jack Johnson’s groovaliscious contribution. When you do listen to the song for the first time, or return to it, pay attention to the lyrics. It doesn’t surprise me that the process of “reusing” is given much more specific attention in the lyrics than “recycling”. Why? Probably because the process of reusing to reduce is a more accessible and independent one, with more immediately visible benefits.

So here is another, additional, mantra meant to encourage you: Precycle, Reuse, Reduce.

What Does “Going Green” Really Mean? (Part 6)

The bicycle. Do you feel motivated to “go green” (bless that little phrase — it has weathered so much trendiness already thus far)? Then consider the bicycle. If you already own one but don’t ride it on a regular basis, why not? If you don’t own one, why not? Surely, some of you will have seemingly reasonable answers to these initial questions, but still: challenge your own excuses so that you can see how far your boundaries will expand in relation to the comfort zone of the planet earth rather than that which is determined solely by your own concerns and fears.

If you think that the bicycle is a wonderful invention and a key to helping slow down and even halt the damage we’re doing to our collective home, you are by no means alone. Listeners to BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours program were invited in 2005 to vote in an online poll that would recognize the most significant inventions since 1800. Ahead of the transistor and the electro-magnetic induction ring, in first place, was the bicycle (which received more than half of the votes, at 59%).

On one hand, take the bicycle. On the other, the automobile. Do you favor the ability to cover long distances in a relatively short amount of time without breaking a sweat? Chances are you don’t own a bicycle, and if you do then chances are you don’t ride it much. If you own a car and a bicycle, what percentage of your travel time do you spend in/on each?

All of these questions are meant to engage you in the process of reconsidering your relationship to travel, to ask you to meditate on how you get from A to B and what your motivations are for the decisions you make regarding that travel.

Certainly, if you live in St. Paul or Montreal, the winter weather is going to offer some interesting challenges to your cycling to and from work, but that is only one season out of four. Three out of four seasons of cycling isn’t bad. Just use those handy tunnels and walk more in the winter. You could even give public transportation another try.

Public transportation. Yes. It is a better option than using your car as a single occupant, but there is a plethora of reasons for why I, and many others I’m sure, hesitate to use it. Ridiculous prices. Angry and condescending transit employees. Break downs, closures, and a lack of reliable communication. A lack of reliability in general, really. Granted, I am thinking of public transportation in New York City, where the price of a Metro Card keeps rising and the quality of service continues to plummet. Even more reason, perhaps, that a bicycle is a better option than public transportation, and certainly more ecologically friendly than the automobile.

When the automobile was introduced to the public, it was marketed as a pathway to freedom. Freedom from what? The small enclosure of one’s community, perhaps. Admittedly, I am just as culpable as anyone when it comes to desiring a long car ride with the windows down and the volume on the stereo up, the heater on in the winter, the moon roof open on a clear night. I’d much rather do it, however, in an electric car.

But the bicycle — unassuming, available, relatively shy over there in the corner. It requires more effort, more energy. Without a doubt. But return to that meditation of yours on your boundaries: When are you considering the needs of your home, and when are you considering your needs exclusive of anyone and everything else?

Cities have proclaimed themselves as bicycle-friendly. But that’s a vague and debatable term. There are many bicycles in New York City, but riding there can be a nightmare (as it can be in any urban area). Portland, Oregon, from my experience, is more embracing of cyclists than New York City, but it’s also a much smaller city; it has a different personality. It is a city not so much in a hurry. It knows more about slowing down.

Because isn’t that what this is all about? Slowing down? The crazy, speed-driven cyclists out there on their savvy road bikes don’t represent the bulk of commuters who know that when they put both feet on the pedals they are thinking of both their own health and the health of this planet we share.

What other items of evidence do you need? The costs of bicycle maintenance are dramatically lower than those for an automobile. It’s easier to be your own bike mechanic than your own car mechanic. The consistent exercise will do you some good — not only physically but mentally and emotionally as well. Not to forget the sense of independence that can be gained, a sense of possibility that can easily filter into various other aspects of your life.

I invite everyone to submit links to their favorite sites for community-based bicycle resources, regardless of where you live, regardless of where the resources are. This planet really isn’t that big, in case you haven’t seen it lately.

What Does “Going Green” Really Mean? (Part 5)

I recently finished reading Bruce Grierson’s U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life?, a very open-hearted, well-researched, and insightful exploration of that moment (that process, really) in which the realization eventually occurs: I must change my life. The book does get a little unnecessarily repetitive with aforementioned facts and ideas towards the last third of the book, but it returns to form by the end. On the whole, it is a book that could be, for someone who has cultivated enough receptivity, enough to spark a u-turn itself.

One of the several contexts in which Grierson illustrates a u-turn is that of the environment, specifically that of someone who feels suddenly attuned to the needs of the earth. (Of course, as Grierson points out periodically, those “sudden” changes may not seem so sudden once you take a deeper, longer look at the history of the person experiencing the u-turn. ) This sense of attunement to the earth, according to Apollo astronaut Ed Mitchell, whom Grierson interviews, allows one to receive “distress signals” from the planet. These signals, when received and embraced, are apt to jumpstart a u-turn in the life of a human being. As the planet’s condition worsens, the rate and intensity of these signals of distress will increase, and we’re likely to see, in turn, an increase in the number of people making u-turns in their lives.

Since human beings are inextricably part of nature, no matter how much we try to dominate the earth, what the planet communicates to us has always been available. It’s much like spacing off for much of your life and then suddenly, hopefully, returning to the conversation (perhaps even for the first time). Whether or not you hear what the earth is telling you is a matter of your receptivity, of your ability to attune to the message being offered. Some people started to listen to the earth a long time ago, some yesterday. Some will today, and some will tomorrow. What about you?

It’s uncertain if a u-turn inspired by an attunement to the earth will automatically lead a person to commit his or her life to pro-environment action, like it did for Julia Butterfly Hill, but my gut tells me that that is the direction in which the u-turn would lean — if not in a professional capacity then at least in day-to-day life. But take it a big step further: Isn’t the day-to-day stuff, our daily actions regardless of profession, a monumental context for change?

If you make a positive u-turn in your relationship to the earth, you make possible a duality of consequence: 1. You are doing what you can to help nurture the earth to a healthier state. 2. You are doing the groundwork for positive change in the other aspects of your own life, professional or otherwise; in other words, you are able to prepare your life for a more comprehensive u-turn.

When we speak of “going green,” it’s important that we not wait for the earth to keep screaming until its lungs collapse to make positive changes in what we do in our daily lives.

To continue to Part 6 of “What Does ‘Going Green’ Really Mean?” click here.