Recycling

For all of my railing against only recycling without thinking about our overall consumption and usage - recycling is still a very good thing to do when you don't have any choices or options for not using something in the first place.

Here are some resources I recently ran across for recycling some of those difficult to recycle things.

Ink/toner cartridges - most office supply and electronics chains will take these (Staples, Office Depot, Best Buy.) In addition, you can check out www.recycleplace.com.

Batteries - Best Buy will also take rechargeable batteries, but what about all of those alkaline batteries that will just leach into our groundwater if you throw it away? Green America recommends www.batteryrecycling.com. Many universities also have recycling programs, and I think some community colleges too.

CFLs and Lightbulbs - Okay, everyone knows (or should know!!!) that you cannot just throw away CFLs. They contain mercury, so you will have to recycle them through an authorized channel. The Home Depot offers recycling, as does Ikea. Green America also recommends contacting Sylvania for a RecyclePak if you can't get to a store location. It's my understanding that the Home Depot will also take incandescent bulbs to throw away - even though there is much less danger with these bulbs going straight to municipal waste.

Appliances (steel) - These things are notoriously difficult to rid oneself of. We're talking refrigerators, water heaters, laundry machines, etc. The first step is to see if the retailer from whom you are buying an appliance from will take your used machine when delivering your new one. Otherwise, Goodwill will take working appliances and you can check with the Steel Recycling Institute to see what you can do with non-working ones.

Packing peanuts and foam - I feel horrible. I just threw out boxes of these things the other day without doing my research. So, my guilt gives you options. You CAN recycle these packaging materials. Green America suggests asking your local pack-and-ship if they take old packing peanuts. Otherwise, they say you should call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800.828.2214. For foam, the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers website offers lists of drop-off locations in each state.

There are of course tons of other things you can recycle, but this is a start. Let me just re-iterate though. Reduce is the first line of defense. Recycling only delays the inevitable (disposal). Also, if you feel like recycling is a pain in the ass to do - don't feel guilty. You're not alone. It IS a pain in the ass, and we have to create better systems where producers of those stupid little foam peanuts take responsibility for their product and not off-load the responsibility onto us consumers or municipal waste systems. I'm sure I will rant more about this in the future, so that's it for now.

Re-cycle your old electronics...

and maybe even get some money for them! Wanted to share a website I ran across recently called YouRenew that lets you essentially "sell" your old electronics (phones, mp3 players, video game systems, etc.) to this company which will then re-sell the items on websites like e-Bay so that they don't stop getting used and get tossed into landfills.

Given how disposable our society has become, this seems like a great idea to minimize the electronic waste going straight into our landfills. Of course, as William McDonough has noted, recycling only prolongs the inevitable. Eventually, these items are still going to be disposed of somewhere. Further, if the items are less resource-efficient (i.e. use more energy) then perhaps its not as good an idea to keep them in use. And finally, the real solution isn't to recycle, but to change our disposable economy into something that makes more sense (has anyone noticed that there are virtually no repair shops in existence anymore?)

Yet, as someone who has like four old cell phones in my desk drawer, I find YouRenew's idea pretty engaging. At the very least, older products that are still completely usable can get a new lease on life for a while with someone else, and that's always better than having something just rot away in a landfill OR your desk drawer.

Stop being so pessimistic!

People who know me superficially will laugh at the title of this post. I admit. I can be a cynic, and an outspoken one at that. Yet, deep down inside, I'm an optimist. Really, I am. I am just more realistic of an optimist than most. :)

In any case, I was reading a capsule in Sunset magazine tonight about designer Shannon Quimby, resident of Portland, OR who undertook what she called the R.E.X. project. That stands for Reuse Everything Experiment. She essentially made it a goal to reuse everything from the tear-down of an old dilapidated house in building a new one on the same site. The idea was simple enough - why throw away perfectly good construction material that still has use (even if it's not in the same capacity as before)?

According to Sunset, she succeeded admirably, not using a single dumpster in the process. While I have always leaned towards restoration over new building - reasoning is also simple enough... there is a lot of stored energy, history, and resources in old buildings and it is incredibly wasteful just to bulldoze and dispose of all of it - but Ms. Quimby's demonstration of how to reuse everything and still get that nice new-house feeling is also quite tantalizing. It's not a bad second choice in my eyes.

However, what made me want to post about REX was the quote at the bottom of the Sunset article:

" In my neighborhood, there's a lot of community brainstorming. One reason the project succeeded was that I never heard "We don't do that." It was always "I don't know how to do that, but here's someone who does." "

Now I can't count the number of times that I've heard the first answer when I proposed environmentally friendly ideas that aren't even that radical to friends and family. And I've always hated that answer. "We don't do that." Or "we can't do that." It's such a cop-out and leaves no room for positive change or growth.

I was taught fairly early on that language reflects our beliefs and sends powerful signals - thus saying something "can't" be done is admitting defeat before even beginning, and nearly always untrue. A much more truthful way of responding would be to say that you "won't" do something - indicating a choice.

Bringing your own chopsticks or silverware to restaurants? Not "can't", but "won't."
Bringing your own bags to the grocery store? Same thing.
Bringing your own tupperware to doggie bag things? Ditto.
Taking public transportation in LA? Yup.
Building high-speed rail in America? You guessed it.

Not saying anyone has to do anything - but hey, if you're making a decision, own up to it at least. That being said, I personally wish the world would all own up to the things they "won't" do in life, and then decide that it WILL do them. :) To tie it back into what Ms. Quimby said... hey, of course you don't do 'that.' If you did, I wouldn't be asking. Now, let's figure out how we CAN do that. Otherwise, we'll never do anything new!

By the way, to read more about Shannon Quimby's project, visit her website!