The Waste Challenge - update 1

A little while ago I rather rashly made a commitment to myself, here on this site, to spend a whole month collecting my rubbish rather than throwing it away.

And now the month is upon me, so I have had to honour my word and start really thinking about waste. This is how things are going so far:

Day 1
- I realise it's the 1st June and hence the first day of the challenge as I am eating my lunch - with a disposable fork - it's made of wood and has got a bit soggy and broken so I can't put it in the cutlery drawer to take to work as I do with the few plastic spoons I pick up. I put it in my bag.

Later I'm working through my receipts (I record all my expenditure - slightly obsessive but there we go) and realise I have unthinkingly tossed them in the bin. I realise why I am doing this challenge - because it is that unthinkingness that I - and most others - have become accustomed to. But once out of my hand this stuff doesn't disappear into thin air, so I really should be thinking about just what I am throwing out.

By evening I'm quite impressed at my small haul for the day, until I realise I'm too late to go to my usual shop and have to buy dinner at Tesco Metro. EVERYTHING is in packaging. There is literally nothing I can buy loose apart from an unripe avocado. Some plastic and netting gets added to my stash.

Day 2.

This regime is pretty good if you're on a diet because if you're looking at food in terms of waste, there is not much there you can go for apart from fruit (this is at least the case in our canteen). I go out for lunch with a colleague though and get a sandwich wrapped in paper and then put in a paper bag stuffed with paper napkins. The bag and napkin I can save and re-use, but the paper is all oily so it has to be chucked (things with food on that might go mouldy over the course of a month are not coming in the bag). So I kind of cheated today, but still pretty good going with nothing so far. However, I am pretty thirsty because my only options for water here are plastic cups or buying a plastic bottle, as I forgot to bring my normal tea mug. Damn! And another dinner needs to be bought and I'm not sure I'll make my shop opening hours. I had better go and try do that!!!

Isolation and Efficiency, and How They Came Around to Bite Us in the Backside

A couple of interesting links to share with you.

The title of this post is lifted from a speech I came across today whilst blog-browsing. It's Barbara Kingsolver's commencement address at Duke University and it is lovely - meandering yet whole, funny, uplifting, vivid, thoughtful. It's called "How to be hopeful" and paints saving our lives on earth as the next big battle, along the lines of historical battles such as the abolishment of slavery, universal suffrage and the civil rights movement -

"That will be the central question of your adult life: to escape the wild rumpus of carbon-fuel dependency, in the nick of time. You’ll make rules that were previously unthinkable, imposing limits on what we can use and possess. You will radically reconsider the power relationship between humans and our habitat. In the words of my esteemed colleague and friend, Wendell Berry, the new Emancipation Proclamation will not be for a specific race or species, but for life itself."

She also talks about ideas of success, describing how things seem to be at present:

"Exhaled by culture, taken in like oxygen, we hold these truths to be self-evident: You get what you pay for. Success is everything. Work is what you do for money, and that’s what counts. How could it be otherwise? And the converse of that last rule, of course, is that if you’re not paid to do a thing, it can’t be important. If a child writes a poem and proudly reads it, adults may wink and ask, “Think there’s a lot of money in that?”"

and as to what could be:

"You could invent a new kind of Success that includes children’s poetry, butterfly migrations, butterfly kisses, the Grand Canyon, eternity. If somebody says “Your money or your life,” you could say: Life. And mean it. You’ll see things collapse in your time, the big houses, the empires of glass. The new green things that sprout up through the wreck –- those will be yours."

I read that a couple of times, and felt kind of softened, comforted, open, hopeful... But the bit I really want to take from this is the following:

"The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. If you run out of hope at the end of the day, to rise in the morning and put it on again with your shoes. Hope is the only reason you won’t give in, burn what’s left of the ship and go down with it. "

Read the whole speech here: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2008/05/kingsolver.html

I came across this through an interesting comments conversation (commentsation?) that sprang up from this post over on No-Impact Man , which in turn is a reply to this article in The New Republic. The article talks about a 'green bubble' which is bursting as the economic crisis draws people away from environmental concerns. It was difficult to read objectively because I kept wanting to say, "well, I'm not like this or that", as it takes rather a snide view of the green movement, however I want to go back and read it again without taking it so personally as it seems to me important to read things that challenge your views as well as those that bolster them. To read without bristling and feeling attacked, but to use their arguments to see what you agree with and what you don't, to see if you want to adapt your held beliefs, or if you can more clearly focus your position by working out what exactly it is that you oppose or disagree with.

my big foot

So, I've just been calculating my ecological footprint over at http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ . These things are kind of vague of course, but still, it's fun in the way quizzes are fun, and also it's quite neat to have the challenge of reducing it! I will check back and see how I am doing in a few month's time I think.

At the moment I need a massive 3.92 planets to support my way of life (if everyone were to live like me). It is a very vivid visual way of making you think about your impact...

Anyway, despite my BIG foot, the only way forward I think is by small steps. More of which to come...