Buy, Buy, Bye: On Consumerism and the Three Rs

I am part of one of the last generations of individuals in the US to remember life before the ubiquitous reduce, reuse, recycle campaign. This symbol is everywhere now. And I do believe that many people do the last step as course of habit, or out of necessity. (You will find, if you live in a large city, many homeless will recycle out of garbage cans and curbside recycle bins for a few coins in their pocket at the bottle return.) There are still many who do not, out of ignorance or uninterest or inconvenience.

All three of these things can be found in all of us at any given moment. I know I have not always wanted to lug the empty bottle around until I get home or find a recycling bin. I also throw away things that are recyclable because it is a major inconvience to collect them and take them away. (Namely Styrofoam, plastic films and waxed cardboard.)

Our cities make recycling possible to an extent. Its worth nothing some cities have "recycling" collection only to dump it in a landfill anyway. I think this is what we call a "public image" campaign. It is worth educating yourself on what your city can and can not recycle. Or will and will not as there is really little that cannot be recycled and reused.

Here is a list of things that should be a course of habit to recycle, because they can be:
Computers and electronics (all those toxic metals and things in them can be reclaimed instead of dumped into the ground...maybe even refurbished ooo!)
Plastics of all kinds
Plastic films (like grocery bags and the films stuff is packaged in)
Paper products of all kinds
Styrofoam
Wood of all kinds
Building materials
Food waste (all food waste)
Household paint
Metals
Batteries
And if you want to know "How do I recycle these things when the trash people only take "paper, plastic, Cans and Glass"? look here.

Lucky for Portland we have people who do some of this:
Metro
Free geek
Portland Office of Sustainable Development

It's also worth looking into what sorts of plastics your trash hauler will really recycle. Here in Portland, plastics have to have a neck. Huh? So disappointing. I have been throwing all my plastics in there to no use. Usually all the items have to be clean and without lids. I think local trash disposal is sorely lacking. The work it still on us, the consumer, to be responsible.


So we recycle, or in some cases, think we recycle when we place stuff out on the curb. But what about Reduce and Reuse? What do those really mean? How many of us actually try? I think most Americans, if they recycle, feel virtuous enough that they have done that little bit and that will make a difference.
I think recycling is terribly important, but I do think the other two R's are rather overlooked and much more capable of having a serious impact. One of which is to lower the amount we need to recycle to begin with. Reducing. More on that later.

First I want to address reusing. We think that by recycling we are reusing. This is only sort of the case. To actually reuse the products we recycle, we have to buy recycled products.

The other way to reUSE is to buy USED. Old things, ESPECIALY things like furniture and clothes. This usually has a major social stigma attached to it as thrift shop, garage sale and JUNK. And well, that's true. We think poor person, student, and cheep, junky and weird. That's rather too bad. Because unless you are buying a brand new House or Car, a used car and a "new" home are often already used and old.

Old homes actually have value, class, charm, character. Some old cars are classics, vintage. How about furniture, antique, rare, charming. So how come some things have value as they age and others become junk? It all depends on you.

How classiest are you? We all are, to some extent affected by our social standing, our job, our income, our family, our neighborhood, and at large, our race, ethnicity and gender. We are affected by media, peer pressure, the economy and current events. It's a big complicated stew that tells you an old house from the 192o's is an investment, but an old sweater from the Goodwill is beneath your standards.

Unfortunate.

You see by reusing items others have cast aside, you lessen the amount of things that need to be made NEW, fewer resources go into the making and packaging and selling of that product and you also save a few dollars.

Take the above mentioned sweater. If it's acrylic, that’s a plastic. It was made overseas. The fiber came from a chemical plastics plant and was dyed with chemical dyes. Then it was woven on a big machine into a fabric, then it was formed into a sweater by underpaid foreign workers, THEN it, like it's thousands of kin, was wrapped in plastic film, placed with others in a box, thousands of boxes. And shipped on a big freight boat using diesel fuel to the USA, where is was shipped via train (diesel) or Truck( diesel) to the Target, Wal-mart, Kohl’s, Macys’s, insert store name here, where you bought it. EVERYHTING we buy is processed some way,often similar to this.
If we stopped buying new, where we can, and buy used, we limit this process and the amount of things in the market that we also need to reuse and recycle.

So onto reducing.
Just stop buying things you don’t really need. If you do buy something, see if you can get it used first.
Seems so simple.
But it's the hardest part.

I love to shop. I get a high off of shopping. I love new things. I love opening new things that have never been used by any other human. I think many of us do. We are born into a culture that values this newness, this novelty, this individual ownership. It is mine all mine and has never been anyone else’s.

You are a good American if you put your money back into the 'economy" by buying new things. Huh? Our economy is driven my consumer spending.
So spend your dollar where they count. Your dollar does talk. It's has a lot to say.

If we stopped buying things, and started buying services, like charities, schools, admissions to cultural places, zoos, museums, parks, money spent on experiences, other people, programs, if all the money we spent on new cars in a year when into schools imagine the social reform. It's going into the economy. It's just not going into the pocket of the people who lobby really hard to get you to put it in their pocket. Who says you have to spend your money on yourself?

Stop buying new where you can. Save your money where you can. Spend it on things that REALLY make you happy. How can a thing actually make you happy? Did it make the people who made it happy? I have a real hard time with this myself. I was raised an American consumer like everyone else. I know I can go find used curtains or sheets or other fabric at goodwill and make new curtains out of it. I also know I can go to target and be instantly gratified and go home with curtains. I don’t particularly like many of the clothes I find at good will. (Maybe it's because most people don’t give their old clothes to goodwill and the like, but throw them in the trash...) But I try. I feel like if I keep trying, at all these aspects of the three R's they will get easier with time.

It's frustrating and hard, but then, our society doesn’t make it second nature for us to do these things. They go against much of how our commerce is constructed. We have a disposable culture. Things aren’t made to last. If you do buy new things, make sure they are made to last. Your dollar talks. It does. Put enough people's dollars together and you have a chorus.

Our great grandparents, well, for those of us around 30 and up, went through the great depression. Everything that could be was saved, reused and recycled. It was a way of life. It shouldn’t take such a dramatic event to do this. It should be easy. It won’t be until you show the people who make rules that it is and everyone is willing to participate.
We didn’t used to have recycling bins and now we do.
Change can happen.