Rethink

After David Attenborough highlighted the problem of plastic in the environment, anti-plastic activists have appeared all over social media; I'm in a couple of 'Plastic-Free' Facebook groups. It's brilliant that so many people are finally getting on board but something has been bothering me about them which I haven't really been able to articulate until just now when I wrote a comment on one of the groups and I realised this was what the problem is.
The original poster essentially said she'd noticed that people are looking for plastic-free options of unnecessary products. I had too and had often wanted to type 'just don't buy it' on posts but she gave beauty products as an example. Predictably, everybody then wanted to justify why they bought X and Y products and there was a very interesting range of comments from skin conditions that are painful and unsightly if creams aren't applied to why women are made to feel so insecure about their looks that many feel the need to create a mask before they walk out of the door. Horrifyingly, some women claimed they were overlooked for jobs or promotions because they were deemed not sufficiently well-groomed or glamorous, despite the fact we are living in the twenty-first century.

But I think people missed the point. There is a whole debate to be had around what's needed and what's desired (I use very little in the way of make up or beauty products but I do use a bit of styling cream on my hair because it's very fine and flyaway and ends up full of static and plastered to my head if I don't. It makes me feel better but it's hardly essential to life) but it's too easy to look for a 'better' option and just carry on buying the same old stuff without questioning why you're buying it in the first place.

There used to be 3 R's but there seem to be an ever increasing number now. I think these 5 do the job. I've seen Regift and Repurpose added but I would include them under Reuse. Let's keep life simple.

Image from Wearth London

The 5 R's are in this order for a reason. You need to start at the top. Refusing is always the best solution. The most sustainable version of something is always the one that you already own. Use it until it breaks beyond repair. It's Refuse that's being forgotten. Do you really need it? This is the question it's very easy to say 'yes' to. Do you REALLY need it? It sounds glib, but we really don't need very much. Some things, of course, will make life less of an endurance. People lived without glass windows for a very long time before someone invented sheet glass but I don't fancy going back to a house with just wooden shutters. But just how much does 'it will make my life easier' actually mean you need it?

 I believe we are at a point where we will have to make life a bit more uncomfortable for ourselves than most of us are used to. I'm not perfect at this at all. It's far too easy to justify our purchases. No matter how immune we think we are to advertising and media pressure we tell ourselves that that pair of shoes, book, baking dish, shelf, garden bench or plant will make a difference to our lives and sometimes they do. But too often, like all the electric time-saving gadgets that we were sold as life changing but  just means that we have more time to be busier than ever, actually there is no amazing improvement in our quality of life. It's down to each of us to decide what we *really* need. How much discomfort or inconvenience can you tolerate to reduce the pressure on the planet? I will note that if you live with other people this immediately becomes more complicated. I deem an awful lot of what my husband and children want as totally unnecessary and vice versa. Which brings us on to Reduce.

So, you've decided you have to have whatever it is you want to buy. How can you reduce it's impact on the earth? If it's a consumable can you buy a sustainable or at least a sustainably packaged version? Solid version of things tend to be lighter on packaging than liquids. Can you reuse the packaging or at the very least recycle or compost it?

If it's a multi-use product, how often are you going to use it? If it's occasionally, can you borrow it?  My husband would really like to have a garage wall full of matching power tools. However he and our friend over the road have different drills, for example. He feels awkward, he says, borrowing all the time but while they can borrow from each other it evens out. Why buy four drills between them when they can have two and just swap. (This is what I mean. Why do you need different drills? I have no idea and I'm afraid I glaze over a bit when he explains). If you can't borrow it, could you hire it?
Failing that, try to buy it second hand. I really believe that there is enough of most things in the world already. Cutlery, for example. Do we really need brand new knives and forks? There must be thousands floating around in need of a home. You have to be prepared to wait if what you want isn't available, which can be hard when we're used to getting everything instantly. I do find that waiting sometimes means I discover I can live without whatever it was after all. That initial flush of excitement palls and you realise that buying matching kitchen chairs isn't going to make you any happier than you are already.

Maybe a group of you could buy it together. We share a pasteuriser with some neighbours. We all make our own cider and pasteurise some apple juice too and whoever used it last stores it until somebody wants to use it.
Making apple juice and cider last year

Next is Reuse. Can you repurpose it or pass it on to someone else? Sell it on eBay or at a carboot sale. My son and I have just sorted out a bag of outgrown clothes for some friends with 3 younger boys. Jam jars get used over and over again. My husband laughs at my fondness for jam jars but some of them are very special to me and I won't give away jam in those jars! They have lids in French or German and they remind me of when we bought them on holiday in France or Germany or Luxembourg and make me smile when I refill them with new jam. If you are not comfortable with reusing lids, you can buy new lids to fit old jars or if you like to water bath your preserves, use nice  jars for storage or use them as candle holders. I was in a very smart homeware store when we were away and they were selling individual glass yoghurt pots (of the type that I may have made my family bring back from a holiday in France because they were too nice to recycle!) made into candles for £5 each!

Raspberry jam in assorted reused jars

Make old paper into new paper or make cat litter.

Upcycling as a term and concept seems to have fallen out of fashion a bit, but it's still an option. I knitted rugs for the bedrooms using selvedge trimmings from woollen fabric manufacturing using a (cheaper) kit from Ingrid Wagner a bit like this one. It knits up really fast but yes, you do look like a Borrower whilst you're knitting them!
Anything to get more use out of something once it's been made and to avoid the manufacture of something new.

This is something people used to be much better at, through necessity. Things were much more expensive, relative to income, than they are now. A wonderful example is in a local castle (actually a moated manor house). Hanging in the great hall is an oil painting from the late eighteenth century of a hedge cutter.

Image result for Broughton Castle Hedgecutter
The Hedgecutter at Broughton Castle

What is incredible is the coat he's wearing. It's well-patched because it's now thought to be a hundred years old when he was wearing it. It would have originally been made for the the landowner and was then passed down through the generations. And I think I'm doing well because a fair amount of my clothing is older than my children.

Only when it really can't be used anymore should we Recycle it. Recycling tends to make people feel they're doing their bit, whereas in fact it's the bare minimum. We can't recycle our way out of the mess we're in now. China and other countries who have been taking our rubbish have quite rightly decided that they don't want it anymore. Suddenly a major destination for much of our waste has disappeared and it's more important than ever to minimise what we discard. Even if waste can be and is recycled it takes water and energy to do it and many materials are downgraded in the process. This means there is a limited number of times they can be recycled. We also need more products to be made with the recycled material in order to close the loop and provide a market for it.

The final destination should be Rot. I admit to some ambivalence here as if I compost cardboard, for example, or natural fibre clothing, I know where it's ending up. It's also providing a growing medium which means I should be able to reduce the number of plastic sacks of compost I buy, so sometimes I do Rot before I Recycle. Don't tell anybody...


























Comments

  1. Amen to all of this! Sometimes zero-waste seems to be a long list of things people can buy as virtue-signalling about saving the planet, when most of us already possess a drink bottle and a lot of glass jars and some bags.. the whole bamboo-cutlery-in-a-pouch thing seems redundant when we all have forks already that we could pop into our handbags.. I think it also puts off folks who are doing it tough as it looks like you have to have disposable income to be zero-waste, when in actual fact, as you say, just not buying stuff is the best thing we can possibly do. And we'll all be better off!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts