Waste Not... From the Laundry to the Computer Graveyard
This is just a quick note on household paths to cutting waste that, with work by you, can spread to neighbors and friends and, ultimately, up the consumption chain to retailers and manufacturers of stuff we need.
I reject the recent wave of assertions that individual action not only doesn’t matter but is capitulating to industries that have marketed citizen virtues to avoid the environmental spotlight. Sure some have done this, but that doesn’t mean it’s all a con.
Soap without the stuff
I was inspired to post by a grumpy tweet from Matt England, a professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of South Wales. He wrote, “Honestly when did the humble cake of soap stop being a thing?? Shelves dominated by plastic bottles of liquid soap, made mostly of water, some at ridiculous prices, crazy. #oldschool”
I replied this way, pullling out some photos I’ve been meaning to post here and happy for the chance: “#CutWaste. Even worse than containerized soaps is the laundry detergent aisle. Literally tons of extraneous water and other ingredients. My wonderful #enviroed spouse @LisaMechaley led us to the strip options. I'm not a fan of #NetZero name, but what a waste-cutting difference!”
I linked to the website of Net Zero Company (that name, to my eye, really cuts against the virtues of this product).
Lisa also switched us from dishwasher detergent to concentrated pellets.
As you may have seen on Twitter, I recently built a dining table for our screened porch from wonderful boards I found abandoned in the small barn on our new property.
I had built another dining table back in 2009 out of orphaned hickory boards in the barn of a Hudson Valley neighbor. That table will outlive me, as will this one.
What have you done to cut your waste stream?
Last year, before I moved to Substack, I ran a conversation on the global flood of electronic waste and efforts to reduce the flow and recycle what is already out there. I was prompted to do so when we were preparing our big move to Maine after 32 years of accumulating old computers and more in the Hudson Valley. I went to Staples and then interviewed a Staples executive and others. Here’s that show and some relevant links:
An E-Waste Update – Can Circuitry Get Circular?
More and more, you’re seeing shopping carts full of electronic gear pushed into stores like Staples. This is all part of a shift in consumer and commercial electronics toward a repair, re-use and recycling norm – and, in the long run, a pathway toward the end of the idea of waste. But the challenge is vast, with 57 million tons of such material generated worldwide in 2021.
Explore the latest trends and issues with "Junkyard Planet" author and Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter, Mike Sauchuk, associate director for retail merchandising for Staples in the U.S., Ke Wang, who leads a team driving public-private partnerships in the World Resources Institute Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy.
Adam Minter's website: https://shanghaiscrap.com/
Staples' recycling page:
https://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/sustainability-center/recycling-services/electronics/
The WRI Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE): https://pacecircular.org/actions
The problem: "We use far more resources than the earth can sustainably supply - 100 billion tons of raw materials annually, of which only 8.6% is cycled back into the economy."
The goal: to double circularity by 2032.
Also explore the PACE 2022 Circularity Gap report:
https://www.circularity-gap.world/2022
Andy, oh my golly, yes! My wife and I still buy and use bar soap, but it seems like decades since I've been anywhere, to anybody's house, where there is a bar of soap by the sink.
Another conservation practice of ours is that we use a clothesline to dry our clothes. There are about 100 million clothes dryers in the U.S., each one churning out about a ton of CO2 every year. Much of the wear that our shirts, pants, and scarves comes from the tumbling and heat in a dryer. Our clothes last a long time, and drying clothes on line gives them that wonderful fresh aroma.