Spring Cleaning

There is, I think, a certain inborn optimism when one decides to reduce their consumption within the range of sustainability. You gaze ahead at your future and see it unfold before you, bright and sunny and uncluttered, free of the annoying detritus that is so common to the modern life. One is sure it will be an existence both creative and fulfilling, marked by a series of homespun solutions to the persistent challenge of how to meet your own material needs while remaining true to the sustainable ethos you have sworn allegiance to.

So it can be frustrating when, in the first week of the experience, you find yourself face to face with what seems to be all of the relics of your over-consumptive past.

My roommates and I are preparing for the birth of their first baby, and there is a lot of work to do. Rebecca has lived in this apartment for seven years with a series of roommates. After so much time and so many people coming and going, things have piled up.

I have a long-standing love of simplifying. In fact, it may be a family trait. During a past spring-cleaning bout with my sisters, my mother – who does NOT carry the ‘simple’ gene (maybe we get it from our father? maybe it skips a generation?) – observed with alarm ‘Why, you just want to get rid of EVERYTHING!’ So I can barely contain my enthusiasm at the prospect of entering an untidy closet and restoring order through sheer force of will and a ruthless, utilitarian drive.

My roommate, almost 8 months pregnant, plays the part of the consultant during these bursts of activity. I emerge from the closet, a little sweaty, a little dusty, but with the unmistakable look of imminent victory on my face as I offer some knickknack or another for her consideration. ‘Salvation Army?’ I suggest again and again, my roommate watching with some discomfort as I all too eagerly dismantle her home, immune to the pull of memory or sentiment that an object sometimes holds over her.

Things have been going well. Initially I had looked with some trepidation at the extra television and broken computer that were awaiting a verdict as to their futures, but a quick Google search revealed several companies such as 4thbin.com and even Office Max that offer electronics recycling services.

The problem with this sort of big spring cleaning projects are not the big items such as retired electronics or a perplexingly large tchotchke collection. The challenge instead is what to do with all of the smaller items, things that otherwise are hardly worth note and are not suitable for either donation or recycling. Dried out pens and pen caps and pieces of plastic whose function we cannot fathom,

Initially we rode high on the thrill of it all, enthusiastically generating solutions on how to reuse this or that item. Soon though it began to appear as though the supply of plastic detritus might be without limit. Our smiles began to falter. Privately we each began to question the inevitability of our own victory. And then, overwhelmed by so much junk, we buckled in the face of it.

With our imaginations exhausted and the unexpected taste of defeat in our mouths, we began to wonder why plastics that cannot be recycled continue to be manufactured. I looked up the issue online and quickly was reminded as to the limits of recycling. According to an article by Emily Gurnon re-posted on econature.com, plastics recycling is markedly different from glass or aluminum recycling in that it does not create a “perpetual loop” for that material. Plastic food containers, for example, are not recycled into more food containers but are converted into durable materials that likely have only one additional life in them before being discarded. Recycling plastics, it appears, is only marginally better than throwing them away.

I had recently, as I wrote in the previous post, turned on to the idea that recycling is not the perfect solution that I had thought it to be. It is becoming more evident the way in which my overconfidence in recycling led, on my part, to quite a bit of waste. I think now with regret for the negative impact I incurred over the years, buying and recycling plastics without care or concern. Of course it’s better to recycle than not, but certainly there is a sadness to the realization that the total result of one's actions has been falling so far short of the intention.

Now I see much more clearly the central importance to reducing my consumption, particularly of plastics. Tomorrow we are going grocery shopping, and I am looking forward to the challenge that will present as I attempt to adhere to the value of minimalism as rooted in a more accurate understanding of the true costs of my purchases.

As for the cleaning, I consider this now to be something of an atonement for all the poor, thoughtless decisions of the past. So we will recycle what we can, though there will be no sense of victory there, as we have a greater awareness of the limits inherent in that system. We will scour our imaginations to reuse the most that we are able, though we know already that the supply of odds and ends that we are dealing with are greater than the force of our collective imaginations. That which cannot be salvaged or recycled we will toss. For each of these actions we have now a better sense of the consequences, and so while we burn in shame and indignation at our wasteful pasts we are inspired and resolved to do better.



Articles used in this Post:
Gurnon, Emily. "The Problem with Plastics." North Coast Journal Weekly 5 June 2003. http://econaturecare.com/blog/?p=315&cpage=1#comment-1056