30 Days Towards Sustainability

Day 6: Reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, make it
over, make do, do without.

Frugality is the essence of today's tip. All of us
have grandparents and great-grandparents that made
it through the Great Depression, and this advice
comes directly from them. Perhaps I should start
by saying. . . "Your grandparents called and told
me to tell you 'waste not, want not'. . ."

REDUCE: In the words of one popular sustainability
campaign - Use Less Stuff! You are NOT your stuff.
Your stuff is NOT you. You do NOT need an
ever-increasing pile of stuff to have a nice life.
Indeed, an ever-increasing pile of stuff, even if
it is nice, expensive stuff, is a serious threat
to the quality of your life. The purpose of life
is not the accuмulation of stuff. Enough stuff
already! Just Use Less Stuff. Teach your kids to
Just Use Less Stuff. (And teach them well.)

REUSE: Reuse the stuff you already have. Don't use
it once or twice and then wrap it carefully in
black plastic and throw it away to be buried in a
landfill. Future archeologists already have enough
stuff to sort through from this era. They do not
need yours. After you eat the pickles, reuse the
jar. Store seeds, macaroni, beans, peas, corn,
flour in it. Drink home-brewed beer from it. Or
home-brewed soda pop. Or water. Be creative and
adaptable.

RECYCLE: If you just can't find another use for
something in your household, RECYCLE! This can
include putting appropriate stuff in the recycling
containers provided by your city's solid "waste"
service. But it can also include donating useful
items to charities, thrift stores, or gifting them
to other people. Have a garage sale! Or have a
gift event (put everything out like a garage sale,
only put a sign up - "FREE STUFF"). Metals can be
sold at recycling centers. In most areas, you can
put metals out on the curb and they will be picked
up by roadside recyclers and taken to metal
recycling companies.

REPAIR: These days, people often just replace
something that simply needs repair. We think this
is "cheaper", but that's because many costs are
externalized. Some items are manufactured in a way
that makes it impossible to repair them. Avoid
buying such items. Find good local repair people
and support them with your business.

MAKE IT OVER: Reinvent new uses for items. For
example, I wanted a pot hanger for my kitchen. So
I rustled around among my stuff, and found the
grate of an outdoor grill and some lengths of
chain. All that I had to actually buy was some
u-bolts, and voila, I have a nice pot hanger in my
kitchen. Pots and pans hang from S hooks that we
made from coat-hangers. When we need something,
often our first impulse is to rush to the store
and buy it. The sustainability choice, however, is
to make "buying something new" your LAST resort.
First ask yourself if this is something you really
need. Second, see if you have the "raw materials"
to make over something. Next, see if you can find
it in the "after market" (thrift stores, garage
sales, flea markets, etc.) Only as a last resort
should you go to the store and buy something new.

MAKE DO and DO WITHOUT: EEK! How can you say this!
We are consumers! We have a duty to consume! That,
of course, is the attitude that brought us to the
present situation. Learning to do without,
learning to make do with what we have, are
important sustainability disciplines. Life has
limits and boundaries, we should get used to that
fact. And this isn't negative, either. Less stuff
means less work. Everything takes maintenance. It
has to be cleaned. It has to be stored. If you
want it then you have to find it. The more stuff
you have, the more time you will spend cleaning,
storing, and finding. Life is short, why spend it
cleaning, storing, and finding a bunch of stuff?

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SUMMARY: Do not buy so much stuff, do not store so
much stuff, do not live with so much stuff, do not
haul around so much stuff, do not use so much
stuff, and do not throw away so much stuff and
bury so much stuff in the ground, where it becomes
useless waste.