Considering Waste Reduction In the New Home

 

Solid waste generated by Americans over 54 years. There isn't a consumption related graph from this period that doesn't skew radically upward. Creative Commons License Wikimedia.

As we enter the holiday season, I am struck by the fact that the messaging of consumption to help the economy remains unchanged as a form of cognitive dissonance when it is the very thing causing our planetary crisis. To even bring it up is to be looked at as a sort of radical when what is really radical is our continued consumption in the face of verifiable evidence that tells us we need to consume less. Like so many other things, we are in a post truth era where reality is what we believe it to be. I wonder if it is a coping mechanism of the human mind to survive in the face of evidence to the contrary that threatens our survival? Something like a substance abuser seeking to escape their sad reality by diving into their drug of choice. I'll have what they are having please.

Though I am not racing out to get some Black Friday deal for something I don't need, I am still a hypocrite engaging in my personal form of cognitive dissonance by purchasing a new home. A perfect allegory for our wasteful society is the scene from the science fiction classic The Fifth Element where Gary Oldman breaks a glass and explains the reasoning behind his action.

Using the words waste reduction and a new home in the same sentence is not just a little ironic. A new single-family home is wasteful at every step of the process, from manufacturing each of its parts to transporting and then hauling off roll-offs filled with detritus to fill up the landfill. I am a hypocrite, like someone touting waste reduction while taking a swig off a big two-liter bottle of soda and munching a bag of chips while filling up a shopping cart with single use paper and plastic at a big box store.
Canadians and Americans often top the list of the biggest waste producers. Still, other developed countries are not far behind, and plastic waste has become the bane of every nation on earth. The ubiquity of plastic waste in the Philippines is a problem I witnessed firsthand, and I smelled the daily burning of plastic waste on the wind.
The graph above has the distinctive look of every chart based on consumption with their steep and seemingly inexorable rise after World War Two and, most strikingly, in the past thirty years. Like every other graph, it is counter to what we know we should be doing: cutting back, conserving, reusing; common human values that only in our current age are ignored and forgotten. If there is one thing we can do something about, it is minimizing the waste in our personal lives: or can we?

World War Two was an inspiring time when the values of conservation were part of a national patriotic mission. Conversely, war industries looking for fresh markets in a postwar world hooked us on an array of plastics, chemicals and levels of consumption that have led to our current crisis. In our current inverse reality, it is patriotic to consume to keep the economy going. Creative Commons License Wikimedia

 

Two things that will be part of my new home that I have had in the past are a compost bin and a worm bin. The worm bin can handle much of the food waste, while the compost bin will handle yard and more significant organic waste. Both will help create valuable new fertile soil for the garden. While the compost pile will all but stop decomposing in the winter, the worm bin will keep going if I keep it in the garage. These two things are relatively easy to do if you have a house and yard but hard or impossible in an apartment or condo. Organic wastes should never go to a landfill, where they just lead to methane creation. Some places are making it law that organic wastes are not landfilled, which is a good step. Most municipalities already compost yard waste and are just one more step away from composting all organics. As with most things, the barriers are more conceptual and cultural. We are socialized to believe that we throw things away, and they disappear without consequence.

I once asked the manager of a local coffee shop that put out its grounds for gardens in the warm weather to let me have them in winter. At the time, I operated a large school garden and had the space for large-scale composting. It didn't happen, and they probably just went into the landfill: the barriers are as much perceptual and cultural as political. I look forward to having my worms and compost pile again as an ongoing science experiment, fertilizer, and soil-producing system.

What about the big one in the middle: containers and packaging? I had a brief moment in my life when I could go to a store with a broad selection of bulk items, but sadly that is not an option where I live right now. Stores with bulk offerings allow one to bring their reusable containers eliminating the endless packaging we dispose of daily. Almost everything at most stores comes in some package. Again, we are socialized away from bulk packaging and toward a world where everything is in its small hard-to-recycle package.

Grey water, the non-toilet water used in the household, is something I have already written about in a previous post. In a perfect world, grey water could keep the lawn green, avoiding waste and a large water bill.

Then there are all the other wastes to consider, that though less frequent, are significant. Electronic waste is a big one, followed by furniture and household tools. The antidote is to buy more durable long lasting things. While this can be easy for furnishings and tools, it can be more difficult for electronics that have built in obsolescence. Again, we are socialized into this system of believing we need new or are forced into it.
 
Ideally, it would be great to reach the point some of the radical waste reducers get to where they can measure what they throw away in small containers.