guilty as charged

I am very excited to announce that I have applied to be a board member of HVME, a non-profit organization dedicated to removing reusables from the waste stream. I have decided to do this because I needed some concrete action to follow up on my convictions and rantings. I highly recommend that anyone who needs arts and crafts materials, building materials, and or, anything in between. Really I recommend that you just visit the next time you go by- there are so many cool things. It also is a great resource for teachers. It is located in the trailers behind the New Paltz recycling center.

I am so happy that I went to visit the operation because I realized a few things. The first is that New Paltz recycling center takes electronics- even though you have to pay to have it taken care of (I don’t know how much). The second thing that I realized was that this resource is here (though newly relocated from Stewart Airport) and I have never taken advantage of it. I realized with dismay that I have never used this great resource.

There are so many more ecologically friendly things that I could do and I wonder why I have resistance to doing many of them.

In my defense, and hopefully to inspire, I do drive a hybrid, reuse and recycle when I can. For our remodeling jobs I have chosen bamboo and marmoleum for the flooring, I even get my milk from payne’s farm in New Paltz with glass ball jars. We put in a fuel efficient wood stove this past winter to cut down on our fuel oil use. I almost never throw food scraps away as we have dogs, a goat and chickens.

Yet there always seems so much more to be done. What I can do better: I buy lots of stuff new and don’t always take the time to consult a green buying handbook, or search for good used ones. I also don’t always buy bulk because I don’t think I can use my glass containers at the health food store, but I haven’t even asked. I drive lots, I throw tons of garbage away, and I, I, I, don’t know, but I feel trapped in a lifestyle that forces me to purchase and discard, purchase and discard. Lather, rinse and repeat....

Some of it is me, things I can change just by being more aware of it. For example, at a friend’s house the other day, I found out that rather than recycling, the paper went into a reuse pile so that the other side could be used. This itself was interesting. I didn’t do this, I just recycled. I tried using the other side for stuff, and occasionally do, but was put off of doing this because of, well, fashion, is one way to put it, or perhaps, one could say peer pressure. I never saw anyone else but one friend other of mine that did it, years ago. I didn’t want to be seen as weird or my papers as “dirty.” I do it for notes and art with little ones, but nothing professional.

A huge part of this is social reality. If we all help each other with hints and support for living ecologically correctly, then it will be easier to build a movement. The flip side of this is that there is a social perception problem here. Poor people reuse, rich people buy new. It is a status thing. What are the best ways for changing this? I would love to hear some ideas...

talkin' trash

I have come to realize how paralyzed I’ve felt about not acting politically. How harmed I feel by the helplessness that has ensued because I have not acted on the many convictions that I have. The last eight years has compressed the very air I live in with perfuse and overwhelming sentiments that seemed to oppose all that resonated as good in me: regime change, promoting torture, gutting funds from education and welfare, gutting the effectiveness of the EPA, rolling back of environmental stewardship, support of financial recklessness in the name of economic growth, censorship of scientists, presidential and vice presidential lying to and manipulating the congress and thus we the people. And, to seal the lid on the pressure cooker: no one seemed to care or notice all these things, or notice that these things were, well, evil. The prevailing message was: don’t notice people stealing the very air you breathe or the water you drink or the earth we all depend upon for sustenance. Just keep buying, buying, and buying. People appeared to be only concerned with making a buck, or buying things cheaply and not caring about the consequences of their actions (including me). The power of stuff: cheap, fun goods are a powerful narcotic, not to mention the ability of easy money to spin your head.

I started armchair activism... I sign so many petitions every night, I risk carpel tunnel. But the issues out there are so overwhelming, rather than feeling I am doing something I come away with the feeling that these problems are so much bigger than me, so overwhelming- can I stop world hunger? Congo rape of women and children? Destruction of the rainforest? Clear cutting? Mountaintop removal? Destruction of salmon populations? Bludgeoning of baby seals? Puppy mills? And the list goes on and on. The depravation of humankind seems to know no boundaries. As Mark Twain said, “I am quite sure... I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices, nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being- that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”

Alas, with the election of Barack Obama, the political tide seems to have turned. Our efforts at turning our society from one of consumer madness towards some sort of social/environmental responsibly one seems at least possible. From the ashes of my soul rises the phoenix of political will to participate in and initiate change for the better.

How did this happen? I have found a route, a pathway that resonates for me. I need to feel connected to my cause in an everyday tactile sense- I am bothered by so many things, but they seem so far away, so out of touch for me, so overwhelming. Yet everyday, in my own life and in my own actions, I am bothered by how I live. I am saddened and frustrated with making dinner because I have to throw away the plastic containers my “natural” chicken comes in, the plastic bags my frozen veggies come in, the bag the rice comes in, the empty milk container. Then washing and placing my recyclables in a container knowing there is only a small chance that they will indeed be recycled. I go to the bathroom and valuable nutrients for the earth are washed away with now wasted good water. Toilet paper, even if recycled, is bleached using dioxins and created using other toxic chemicals. Dental floss is thrown away. Cabinets full of medicines that cannot be returned. Throw away that old carpet, the old nasty dog chair, throw away those Styrofoam take out containers. Throw away the bags that the dog food was in, throw away the bottle caps, create mounds of recyclables. I find every time I go to the garbage and put something in I feel as though I am desecrating the earth, spitting on our ancestors that worked so hard to bring us here. In the natural world there is no trash. We are what we eat, experience, and been discarded. We like to throw things away because it appears that it then is not us. It “goes away.” But that is not true. The waste never goes away. It gets packed away for future generations to be poisoned by. We are creating dripping time bombs with our disposable lifestyle. We are blinded by the invisibility of the source and final resting place of our stuff....

What can be done? Well, we need to band together. We need to recognize that even though the advertisers, the manufacturers, the financial wheelers and dealers, tell us that buying, buying, buying is what is good for us because it is good for the economy, we need to realize that by buying incessantly without substantial change in manufacturing and waste management practices, we are destroying the world. We must stop this flow of garbage. What can be done? I have ideas, but it cannot be done alone. We must reject this lifestyle and seek out others. Does it have to be about stopping buying? Not necessarily, it has to be about forcing change to the options we are given. A choice between coke and pepsi is no choice at all. I have ideas. Many ideas.

Here are some ramblings my ideas:

We must seek out each other for ideas and support. Boycott bottled water or bottled anything if possible. To put together a coalition or non-profit that will create actions to return the garbage to those that created in and demand accountability. People must be responsible for the garbage they create and it is not the consumers fault. It is not our fault. To live outside the garbage stream is to live outside of society at this point. It is the major corporations that exploit our human frailties, exploit labor, exploit materials, and exploit our desire for ever more and cheaper stuff. The consumer culture was created by the manufacturers for profits; we must see how it is all connected. The destruction of our resources, the creation of more people with less money and less people with more money, the lack of political will. We are mesmerized by our toys. We must fight back against those that would steal our world in exchange for a few trinkets; we are all natives to be exploited by industry. Congress does not have the will to fight it. They are bought. We the people must fight back by returning the trash from whence it came. The new mantra: be responsible for your product.