Reflections on Reducing

As I mentioned in my last blog, I planned to write about “reducing”. This is apropos because, for the month of March, one of our employee sustainability teams is planning a variety of activities around reducing waste. They are sponsoring a paper cup reduction contest between the buildings on the Mountain View campus. And as you might remember from a prior blog, paper is 1/3 of waste going into municipal waste stream.

According to Metaefficient:
“In 2005, Americans used and discarded 14.4 billion disposable paper cups for hot beverages. If put end-to-end, those cups would circle the earth 55 times. Based on anticipated growth of specialty coffees, that number will grow to 23 billion by 2010—enough to circle the globe 88 times. Based on hot cup usage in 2005, the petrochemicals used in the manufacture of those cups could have heated 8,300 homes for one year.”

Check out the impact of your own coffee habit here

Clearly, we have an opportunity to reduce our use of paper cups to both save money and reduce the amount of waste going into landfills.

In addition, I’ve been thinking about reducing quite a bit since I’ve also been reading “Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic” by John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor. Basically the premise of the book is that the more stuff we consume, we are not necessarily happier and better off.

Stemming from a PBS documentary, the authors describe how Americans feel the need to constantly consume and it is having detrimental affects on our environment, families, and communities. The authors describe “affluenza” as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” (p.2) And they track its symptoms, causes, and then describe what we can do about it – personally and society wide.

First let me state that I’m reading this book NOT because I want to tell others how they should live their lives, but because I want to take a harsh look @ how I live my life. In fact, I would agree with the statement that I am potentially one of the worst offenders. I live by myself in my own apartment 35 miles from work so that I can have the life outside of work that I want.

That being said, the stats that were very compelling to me were:

• The average size of new homes is now more than double what it was in the 1950s, while families are smaller. (24-25)
• Americans total yearly waste would fill enough garbage trucks to wrap around the Earth six times and reach half way to the moon.
• “Since the 1950s, the percentage of land in our communities devoted to public uses – parks, civic buildings, schools, churches, and so on – decreased by a fifth while the percentage of income we spend for house mortgages and rental payments increased from a fifth to a full half.” (66)

BUT,

• The number of people Americans who describe themselves as “very happy” has remained stable or decreased since 1957 while we consume two times as many things.

I understand that many may disagree with what these authors say. For instance, re:my last post on “re-using”, a friend commented that “if we all did what you said and reused, our economy would collapse.” I agree that the extreme is not necessarily desirable or even achievable. And I know that some aspects of consuming are unavoidable – we have to provide for our families and ending consumption altogether is not necessarily fair to them.

Nevertheless, I find it compelling to think about the information and theories in the book “Affluenza”. Putting aside the impact on the environment and the impact on society for a moment, what truly makes me happy? And will reducing consumption in certain areas of my life make me happier?

If you’d like to know more about the book and the information, feel free to visit their pages on the PBS site:
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/show/show.html

What's Even Better Than Recycling?

My group's month of the three R activities (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) came to a close Friday with our Book, CD, DVD, and Video Swap in our cafeteria. Employees brought in material they didn't want anymore and others came buy and picked up new books, movies, and music. It was a big hit - one person's garbage is definitely someone else's treasure! Many people asked us to do this again – hopefully we will be able to. With all this enthusiasm around the swap, I thought that I would talk a little about reusing.

While recycling is awesome and a great step, reducing and re-using are even more powerful actions. Why?

Even if you recycle what you’ve used, you still contributed to environmental degradation through the original creation of the product. And unless we buy significantly more recycled products, we won’t use all the material we recycle, making the recycling effort wasted. Reducing and reusing avoids these two potential pitfalls.

A few stats to prove my point:

• The industry that makes all these new things we buy creates almost 20% of the CO2, a key greenhouse gas, that we humans create.
  

• Bought any new t-shirts lately? It's estimated that over 2600 gallons of water are used to grow the cotton for just that one new t-shirt.
• In 2006, Random House estimated that it used 120,000 tons of paper for its book business. If instead we used recycled paper for that 120,000 tons, we could save over 2 mm trees. And that's just Random House...
  

Okay, so you get my point. A lot of basic resources we need to live (including our atmosphere) are significantly affected by the stuff we buy.

Recycling is a great way to start, but reducing and reusing are a way of taking your “greenness” to the next level. As described by Treehugger, a good principle to live your life by is:

Reducing the amount that we consume, and shifting our consumption to well-designed products and services, is the first step. Finding constructive uses for “waste” materials is next. And tossing it in the blue bin is last. (The garbage can is not on the list, for good reason.) Through a balance of these three principals you can easily see your landfill-destined waste dwindle fast. A good example of recycling is setting your empty water bottles in the bin on the curb. But by using a water filter and reusable container you can reduce or completely eliminate your need for disposable plastic bottles.

I’ll address “reducing” in a future blog. But since our swap was such a great example of “reusing,” I’ll give you all some more ideas about how to reuse in your life.

SOME EASY WAYS TO REUSE

The most environmentally friendly way to reuse is direct person-to-person transfer like swaps. Giving products and material directly to someone else you know will use it virtually eliminates any additional environmental impacts, like pollution from shipping, etc. that might be incurred by doing something like EBay. (EBay is good though too)

• Sign up with Freecycle in your area. When you need something new or have something that you no longer need, post it in your Freecycle group and find someone who needs it near you.
• Use the Craigslist Free Section. Created after popular demand from Craigslist users, it’s the easiest way to get rid of things and give it to people who really need it. It took 30 minutes to get rid of a bookshelf I no longer needed and all I had to do was post one e-mail and carry the bookshelf downstairs.
• Donate used books to local library or find your local used bookstore. Get your reading material there too! (call the library first to find out if they can take the material).
  San Francisco
  San Mateo County
  Santa Clara
• Create a community of “Re-Users” among your friends and colleagues. Whenever you can something that you don’t want anymore, e-mail all your local friends and ask them if they could use it. When you have a party, ask everyone to bring a book to swap. When you are done with your children’s toys, clothes, or other accessories, search out the pregnant women at work and ask them if they need it.