Americans are consumerists living in a society driven exclusively by consumerism

Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise.

So not long ago I received a comment on my “Would you rip someone off for sixty four cents? How my morning Coffee will be forever changed” commentary that talked about running out of space on this old planet and the benefits of recycling. Since then I have been paying closer attention to how much garbage I haul to the curb to be picked up by nameless men and taken away to an unknown place. I was kinda shocked to see how much stuff I throw away every week and started feeling guilty. Why you might ask, my community provides the citizenry the ability to recycle specific bits of debris that would otherwise go into the landfill. Mr. Oatmeal is ashamed to admit that he has never used that blue bin for anything other than storing my lawn chemicals in the shed. There is another story for another day. I have since emptied my lawn chemicals but have not yet started using the blue bin for recycling. I need to find out more about what items I am allowed to put in there and I would like to visit the unknown place it all goes here in town. a poor excuse I know but I am working on it.

In my attempt to become more conscience of my “impact” on the world I decided to start learning about recycling. I learned there is some dispute as to who or what is at the top of that list, some say iron and steel are by far the most recycled and others claim that asphalt roadways top the list. For the sake of the conversation I will give them equal billing at the top. In looking in my trash can I do not have a lot of iron and steel or asphalt to move over to my blue recycle bin. I also learned that while plastic recycling is on the rise it presents a few challenges, different plastics can’t be mixed, so proper sorting is critical. To add to the confusion is the labeling, does that mean it was made using recycled material or that it can be recycled. There a smarter people them me working on solutions to those problems and I see a day not to far off where that type of ambiguity is gone. Glass and aluminum are high on the recycle list, recycling glass offers other impact reducing advantages as well. When ground up glass, called cullet, is added to the raw materials used to make glass it somehow reduces the melting point (who knows why) which allows the manufacturer to further reduce their impact by using less electricity that was most likely generated by the coal fired electricity plant.

So during that investigation, which is ongoing, I began to realize how much stuff we Americans and other developed nations “consume”. On my street alone most people have a least two garbage cans on trash day. When you think about it our society has become one of massive consumerism that is driven by our thinking we need everything all the time and it has to offer every time saving feature some dude in a rubber room can dream up. We used to be a society that was self sufficient, able to solve problems with innovative solutions that had a minimal impact on our surroundings, we hacked our way through and settled the west for Christ sakes with nothing more than rifles and true American grit. Now we tend not to fix anything, we replace it. What rung on the socio-economic ladder we are on determines the level of our consumerism insanity, the insanity is present on every single rung from top to bottom. Even those on a low rung would never consider having a cell phone “fixed” instead of getting a new one. We can apply that to our cars, our dishwashers, lawn mowers, microwave ovens and even light fixtures. Why don’t we just try to fix these things anymore, fixing things would reduce our impact and in the case of cars it may knock steel off the top of the most recycled list. Cars more than 10 years or so are seen as to old to keep.

Recycling is a key component of modern waste management but it is the third component of the “reduce, reuse and recycle” waste hierarchy. I want to speak for just a moment about the other two legs of the waste management stool. Waste reduction takes careful planning and purchasing of everything from potato’s (compost skins if you don’t eat them) to the automobiles that use renewable resources such as soy beans for seat foam to ones that minimize their use of hazardous materials. I have been thinking a lot how I can minimize my waste footprint. The reuse leg I have pretty much under control, I fix things around my house. I fix the washer when many would replace it, I fix the furniture instead of replacing, I fix the pool pump instead of replacing, I even fixed an 8 dollar thumb drive once and most of all I fix my jalopy instead of replacing. All of these actions save me money which was my initial goal but I now realize that has helped me reduce my overall waste impact on society. The recycle leg I am working on and I am going to improve but minimizing the accumulation of waste and keeping things operating before they need recycled seems an easier approach, at least to me. So I ask your understanding and want you to get off my back about not using my blue recycle bin yet.

What is your overall impact on our world?