The Two R's

"Two R's?" You ask? "Wait a sec, I thought there were 3 of them!"

Yeah, actually, so did I! And that is exactly my point - everyone seems to have forgotten the first two of them! Back in the 80s we all started learning about "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - in that order". But somewhere along the line, this mantra has been reduced to simply "Recycle, then pat yourself on the back for doing such a great job". I've actually seen people brag about how full their recycling bins are, and to me they seem to have completely missed the point.

The fact is that recycling is only one small step above tossing something in the garbage. In some cases it is probably even more of a resource drain because of the energy and resources required to do the recycling. We need to get back to basics here.

Reduce

This is the big one. The one that has the most impact on our planet. We all need to reduce our consumption of just about everything. This goes right back to my personal mantra of "wants versus needs". Everybody wants all sorts of things. We are programmed to - it really is that simple. If commercials and product marketing was not proven to make us want stuff, corporations would not collectively spend billions of dollars a year on marketing. It really and honestly is that simple.

It is up to each and every one of us to resist. The easiest way to do this is of course to not allow one's self to be exposed to the corporate marketing machine. And the easiest way to do that, is to stop watching TV. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but I used to be one of the biggest TV addicts going. But when our first son was born, my wife and I decided to cut the cord with the TV and got rid of it completely - we did not even try to get free over-the-air TV. We did not want our kids growing up to be brainwashed in that fashion. And we could not be happier as a result!

Whether or not cutting out TV is a reason why neither one of us really have burning wants and desires (of tangible, consumer goods) is of course a topic of debate. Maybe even a chicken-and-egg debate. The fact is that we both used to have burning desires of that sort, and no longer do. In any case I am a much happier person as a result, and I believe she would say the same.

Reuse

If something cannot be avoided, then perhaps it can at least be put to another use when its primary use has expired. Or perhaps someone else will want to continue to use it in its primary use. Like when we moved into our house 8 years ago and the box spring would not fit up the stairs. Rather than toss it out, I took it all apart. There was lots of good wood on that box spring, and there was also a huge heavy-guage wire lattice which I painted with rust-proof paint and put to good use as a trellis on which I grow my grape vine.

There are alls sorts of ways to keep stuff from ending up in landfill sites, and we all need to get a lot more creative about how we do that. One simple way to do it is to buy stuff from 2nd hand stores like Value Village, Saint Vincet de Paul, and the Salvation Army stores here in Ottawa. My wife and I buy a tremendous amount of our stuff from these places, including a lot of our clothing. It keeps someone else's cast-offs from ending up in landfill sites.

Recycle

Under this banner I will also put another holy-grail - composting. But only of food. As I've said recently, any food that does not get eaten is a failure. One should not pat one's self on the back for composting leftover food instead of throwing it into the garbage. One should ask one's self why the food did not get eaten, and try to change one's habits such that it does not happen again.

Unfortunately there are a lot of food items that come in non-returnable containers, and this certainly constitutes most of the recycled goods that come out of our house. But it helps to be conscious of it, and to try to do better. For example, we eat a fair bit of yoghurt, and of course the containers end up in the recycling bin. So I decided recently to start making my own yoghurt. OK, I now toss more milk bags into the recycling, but those weigh a lot less than the yoghurt containers, so I am confident that overall it is still a significant reduction in waste. Plus there is the added benefit that we save an awful lot of money on yoghurt now!

And of course there is a lot of recyclable material that comes from packaging from consumer goods. The easiest way to avoid this stuff is to go right back to square one : reduce. Ask the basic question of "want verus need". Do I really need this? Really, truly and honestly? Chances are, this is not the case. Or if it is something I really actually do need, perhaps what we have to start doing is what Germans did in the late 80s and early 90s when they got fed up with all the overpackaging. They started unpackaging their purchased items in the store, taking the item home, and leaving the packaging in the store for them to deal with. This turned out to be a pretty effected way to send the message quickly up the "food chain" that overpackaging was not acceptable.

Don't get me wrong because recycling does have its time and place. But in general we do far too much of it when we should be reducing or reusing. Same goes for composting. Sure, yard waste and that sort of thing is great to compost. But food should not be composted, because that is waste. Food should be eaten. We should not be patting ourselves on the back for wasting it.