#Earth Deeds - The True Nature Of Recycling
@elamental has put out a call to action asking steemians to share weekly stories about their Earth deeds.
This is an important initiative to educate and inspire others to step up and care for mother earth in real ways.You can read more about the challenge and incentives here!
This week I've decided to talk about recycling and how we recycle on the the Walkerland homestead.
A friend of our was visiting our homestead and lamented that we did not have a curbside recycling program.
My eye started to twitch as I prepared myself for what promised to be a frustrating debate.
She lectured that she could live anywhere that didn't have a recycling program and looked at me haughtily implying that we didn't care about the planet by not having blue bins in our garage. I reminded her that most homes out in the countryside don't have luxury town services. You are left to your own devices just like in the old days. This is like ... homesteading for real.
I'll paint the picture of why this infuriated me so much.
In our comfortable log cabin we had just shared a home grown meal that required no plastic packages or trips to and from the store. She was enjoying a vacation in a place where daily life is one of mindfulness, the food is made from scratch, and our time is spent with nature. Organic, simple living is the focus of the day and yet she felt so strongly that I was doing wrong because we don't subscribe to the blue bin reduce, reuse, recycle propaganda?
Deep breaths.
I reminded her of a saying that I've come to love. It is so simple and just speaks volumes to the truth of the matter.
"There is no away."
Where does that recycling that you've carefully washed and sorted go exactly? How much fossil fuels and energy goes into creating that waste, transporting it and then recycling it? Do you know where your recycling ends up? do you even know or care? Why don't you make less waste to begin with??
We are still friends but certainly don't see eye to eye on this topic. Change can be very hard especially when it is inconvenient.
I personally think that recycling programs are a sham. It serves to conceal and support the continuance of the real problem. In this case the problem is a gargantuan, mindless production and consumption wheel created by the masses. A recycling program makes it easy for people to feel good while ignoring the fact that they should be minimizing how much waste they create in the first place.
Ahh, I've written about this subject before as it really does get me all fired up. Here is a snipped from a former post that I wrote on this subject called "Let's Stop Drowning Ourselves In Garbage & Recycling Is A Sham. I think this is truly enlightening.
China Refusing Our Garbage
In January 2018 China stopped being the “world’s garbage dump,” and have put a ban on various garbage imports. Before the beginning of this year China was dealing with about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products. So now what? Plastics are piling up EVERYWHERE! Here are a few of the stats on how it's impacted us so far.
Calgary, Alberta, used to send 50 percent of its plastics and 100 percent of its mixed papers to China. Since the ban in January 5,000 tons has been collected and stockpiled with nowhere to ship it. This is just one city in Canada. Add Toronto, Calgary, Saskatoon ... plus the rest of the country.
Britain was sending China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools every year according to Greenpeace U.K. An overpopulated island with that much garbage laying around. What are they going to do now?
The United States was exporting more than 13.2 million tons of paper & 1.42 million tons of plastics to China each year. Hey, maybe send it to Canada - Trudeau won't mind.
So, now that I've provided some information on why I think recycling programs are a sham what do we do? I much prefer to provide suggestions and solutions so here are three of our favourite ways to "recycle".
Growing and preserving our own food
The ultimate in low carbon footprint and recycling is growing and preserving your own food. The jars are used over and over until they finally break in the canner and the food is delivered on foot from the garden to kitchen. No plastic, no fuel, no chemicals. It's perfect. This is not realistic for everyone but even the act of buying local, having a supplier that you can return jars to, and just more mindful approaches such as buying in bulk using your own containers makes a difference. Having a real food pantry is a truly empowering and good thing to do not only for the planet but for your health.
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Low carbon footprint, reused jars. Home preserving lends itself well to true recycling.
Reusing bottles and containers
By adhering to the mindset of "there is no away" we hang onto all those bottles, jars and containers that the stuff we buy comes in. This makes us mindful of the waste we are generating and motivates us to find ways to enjoy those items more sustainably which usually involves making it ourselves. We'll try to use those containers for storing other items, art projects and other creative endeavours. Just the sheer annoyance of having boxes and stacks of this clutter makes us less inclined to create more garbage.
Easy to make Rhubarb ginger soda in an old Captain Morgan rum bottle.
Buying good quality & used!
Whenever possible we purchase items we need for the house second hand. They don't come with packaging so we haven't got anything to throw away. Our furniture is nice, so it's not as though anyone is even aware that the chair they are sitting on came from a flea market.
We also research carefully and purchase the best quality goods so that it will last a long time. We don't feel good about buying crap that ends up in the land fill. A lot of things are replaced and upgraded needlessly and our ancestors didn't do this. Disposable is a modern mindset that needs to go.
Do you ever wonder what happens to all the stuff you throw out? What will things look like in 50 years? Whatever you do, take an honest look and consider the impact that your choices have on the world.
How do you recycle?
Building a greener, more beautiful world one seed at a time.
Homesteading | Gardening | Frugal Living | Preserving Food| From Scratch
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You can also find me at: walkerland.ca |
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Giggling as I try to envision what kind of tweet Trump could dream up about that.
I'm guilty of taking stuff to the recycling center, but I do try to minimize the waste. Somebody needs to create a program that disincentivizes companies from sending so much junk mail! And I have a growing armada of wine bottles in the attic....can't wait to reuse them to make my own wine one day :)
hehe ...I thought of you when I wrote that.
We aren't perfect, it's near impossible to not bring some packaging home and it is absolutely gross how much is used to package a teeny, tiny item. There are alternatives to plastic that do far less harm ... sunflower husks, popcorn, all kinds of things, I do wish people would reduce consumption and when they do shop support companies that care.
Brilliant! I also do my best to avoid buying any plastic at all! I love that saying there is no away! Didn't hear it before, but so true. If you are "stuck" with all the garbage you make, it would really make people reconsider what they buy and reuse.
That being said, we recently visited a recycling station in Denmark, and I was really impressed with how much that got recycled (70% recycled, 23% get's burned for heating water and houses and the last 7% to the dump) that is 7% too much though, and as you say, anything recycled costs energy and new materials in the processing, so it is really just continuing the mad cycle of consumption and throw away
that is really interesting and far better figures that anything we'll ever see here. I think Denmark should be proud of making changes of that magnitude.
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this is fantastic and I agree most f the recycling programs are there to make people feel they are doing something without actually questioning the real problem of the amount of waste they are producing. I re use all my jars I am lucky that at the local health food store I can use them to buy dry produce. I don't but new clothes, there is an amazing boat where I live where people leave clothes they no longer want so you take and leave what you wish. I get my fruit n veg at the market so no packaging there but there are still some things it is hard to get away with and I still have waste I need to put somewhere, it is a huge problem xxx
That boat sounds so amazing! My mother in law has a basement and closet much like that boat. Every time she comes she brings a pile of clothing and random things she's gathered for me - all from flea markets and such. So much fun.
We also have items that we don't need (mostly packaging) and it is a problem. I really feel burdened when we are pressed to buy or are given a gift and it comes in layers of plastic. We do our best but sometimes there it is. :(
It's my 69 year old mother leading the way for our family. She won't buy plastic at all if she can help it. What's the need for recycling if you don't get it the first place?
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You have such a cool mum! Every story you tell makes me hopeful that my son will tell stories about me the way you do about your mum some day. The rebel with a cause. :)
We don't have recycle pick up here; but we do have garbage collection once a week. I'mm not even sure my little township has a recycle center. We moved here over two years ago and I have never heard of us having one.
I do try to NOT buy prepackaged foods to avoid having excess garbage.
I wonder what happens to all the garbage that does not decompose? Burn it? Yes, avoiding the garbage in the first place is the only way.
This is SO TRUE! It is amazing to me how many people think it is OK to use plastic because it goes in the recycling bin!
I appreciate recycling in cities. I am a minimalist, but there are times in a city when I generate plastic and glass no matter how hard I try. Having the ability to recycle is a necessity, while I continue to look for ways to reduce. I recently found a bulk food store in Florence and am pushing our local market at Damanhur to bring more in. When I just have to use plastic or glass, I prefer to recycle than just throw it away. Paper products, on the other hand, mainly go into the compost. There is no excuse to not compost. You can either do it in your tiny city apartment for your house plants or the local park or you can get together with friends and do it!
It is true that recycling is beneficial at times, it's better than no recycling. I suppose I just needed to emphasize that It should be the secondary action once we have exhausted our efforts to avoid it in the first place.
I think if people stopped buying things encased in plastic by default, choosing those that have been packaged with renewable material instead manufacturers might change their packaging practices.
We recycle too - its near impossible to live without a bit of plastic coming into the house.
This is exactly my concern with all the new businesses being created around recycling plastic products. While recycling and reusing is a great first step, the real goal should be total elimination. If these businesses grow, they are going to continue to require the creation of plastic, which I truly believe can be completely eliminated. We need all these new recycling businesses to have a phase-out plan, so that we can shut them down easily as we step away from generating so much plastic.
Our work as Bioversum is about Circular Economy solutions that are inspired by nature so that we think about the potential waste problem at the very beginning. People need to learn that it is not necessarily more hygienic to have everything individually wrapped in plastic. If we learn how to buy and store things differently, we could eliminate tons of unnecessary plastic!
Thanks so much for sharing, this resonates with my own beliefs.