Waste not.

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.
~ E.C. McKenzie

Hello. My name is Kate. And I am addicted to recycling.

I admit, I can be a bit obsessive about it. My co-workers used to call me Kerry Kate after this Terry Tate commercial.

I first became aware of the problem of garbage on a trip to New York City with my friend Christina and her parents in the late 1980's. We were on a ferry boat to look at the Statue of Liberty, and then there was the rankest smell you can imagine. The captain announced that the half dozen nearly overflowing garbage barges had no place go, so they were just afloat waiting for a garbage dispute between New York and New Jersey to be settled. Neither State wanted to be financially or environmentally responsible for the discarding of the garbage. The image of the garbage barges in front of the State of Liberty, and thankfully not the smell, has never left me.

My passion for recycling began in 1990. I was listening to cassette tapes of R.E.M. and Midnight Oil, and my social consciousness was on the rise. The Valdez Oil Spill had happened a year earlier, and everybody was concerned about dolphins being killed for tuna and the ozone depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The Berlin Wall had just come down, and there was sense that it was indeed possible to change the world. I was a freshman in high school making sure my classmates were aware of the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day (celebrated every April 22), and working with some seniors on a boycott of styrofoam in the high school cafeteria. That Earth Day, the slogan was, "Think Globally, Act Locally", and there was all sorts of information out about recycling, such as "recycling one aluminum soda pop can save enough electricity to run a TV for three hours". Stats like these made such an impression on me, and I probably drove my family nuts talking about recycling and saving the earth.

But it wasn't until my junior year that I learned about composting. My father had been saving the grass clippings and leaves to mound up around our pine trees for years, we just had never called it composting, it was more "the strange thing Dad does because he doesn't want to buy garbage bags". But in 1991, a German exchange student, Eva, lived with my family. At that point, my family was putting out four garbage cans a week, and her family in Germany of a similar size was discarding about the amount that would fit into one of those plastic grocery bags that we all hate so much. In Germany, they were recycling everything — paper, paperboard, cardboard, plastics #1-7, aluminum foil and cans, steel, glass of all colors. Plus they brought their containers back to the grocery for refills on things like shampoo and laundry detergent, so packaging in general was a lot less. And then on top of all of that wonderful recycling and lack of disposable packaging, they were composting all of their kitchen waste (egg shells, orange peels, tomato stems, potato skins, coffee grinds, etc.) and all of their yard waste (grass clippings, hedge prunings, autumn leaves, etc.) Eva was certain that my family could waste less if we only recycled everything and kept a compost pile.

There's this show on Planet Green called Wa$ted! with Annabelle Gurwitch and Holter Graham. They pick a family or a business and then calculate their ecological footprint based on their day-to-day living habits, and then ask them to initiate more sustainable practices, and for every dollar they save on lower heating and water bills etc., Wa$ted! matches as their reward. To illustrate the wastefulness of their current lifestyle (before sustainable changes are put in place), Annabelle and Graham collect the contestants' trash, and then bring a year's worth of it and dump it on their lawn, going through it, and showing the folks what could have been recycled or composted or donated. When you see a year's worth of garbage of just one household or business, it will make you feel sick to the stomach. And then to think that is just one family or business, you really begin to wonder where on earth (literally and figuratively) is all the garbage being put, and can we really continue to live in this fashion?

Changing one's lifelong relationship with garbage, and the attitudes, habits and behaviors that support it, is possible through awareness, knowledge and practice.

1) Look at what you toss for a week, literally pause each time you toss to consciously note what you are throwing "away".

2) Tour your local landfill. Learn and see for yourself where your waste goes.

3) Read Rubbish!: The Archeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy. Here are two of my favorite passages from the book:

“…The dynamics of a modern landfill are very nearly the opposite of what most people think. Biologically and chemically, a landfill is a much more static structure than is commonly supposed. For some kind of organics, biodegradation goes on for a little while, and then slows to a virtual standstill. For other kinds, biodegradation never really gets under way at all. Well-designed and managed landfills seem to be far more apt to preserve their contents for posterity than to transform them into hummus or mulch. They are not vast composters; rather, they are vast mummifiers.” page 112

“The problem is that laboratory conditions and even the conditions in a compost pile—or in a field or city street—are usually not comparable to the conditions in a landfill. Biodegradation works most efficiently under composting conditions, when debris is chopped up, regularly turned, kept wet, and exposed to the oxygen that aerobic microorganisms, which biodegrade organic material in the most straightforward way, require. These conditions are not met in modern landfills. The garbage stays where it has been dumped, tightly compacted but largely intact. Although some 200 landfills do recycle leachate through their garbage deposits… adding fluid waste or other kinds of fluid to landfills is widely discouraged, for fear of increasing the possibility that toxic liquids will migrate [for instance, into groundwater supplies]. And below all but the very top layers of a landfill (about eight feet) microorganisms that require oxygen seem to survive in insignificant numbers.” page 117

4) Find out how and what and where to recycle in your community at Earth911.com You can recycle paper products, metal, glass, plastics, hazardous, electronic, automotive, household, garden and construction waste and materials. Set up a recycling station.

5) Compost your yard and kitchen waste. Composting is one of the simplest things a person can do to reduce their household waste and improve their gardening conditions. Not only does it reduce what you send off to the landfill and lessen your ecological footprint, it also: enriches garden soil with nutrients; improves with soil aeration and water retention; and helps to prevent soil erosion. Healthier soil results in healthier plants, and thus healthier people. Plus, because manures and other composts are in higher demand (read: Manure More Precious Than Gold), you can save a lot of money by creating your own. [Composting 101 is up next.]

Awareness of one's waste leads to an awareness of one's consumption. Soon you will not only be thinking, "can this be reused, re-purposed, recycled, donated, composted,...?", you will begin to think, "did I really need this in the first place?" When you realize there is no "away" in "throwing things away", you don't see things as disposable anymore. You realize most things marketed as "disposable", could just as easily be labeled, "poorly made". Even though you can easily recycle plastic and paper grocery bags, you'll see the futility of them, and decide to carry your own reusable cloth bags. You will be able to do more with less, and when you do shop, you will want to buy things of lasting quality and craftsmanship or that have been strategically made so that they can be reused or upcycled.