Mattress Pad

Day 169: Mattress Pad

This mattress pad is on a par with Harpo's girlfriend: so nasty I can't tolerate the embarrassment of sending it off to the ragpickers. It went straight to the trash, and then onward to the landfill. 

I have a question: are landfills really so bad? I understand that in this country, they begin with an impermeable layer that prevents pollutants from entering the ecosystem. This is a stark contrast to Belize, which we visited a year and a half ago. The landfill - say, dump - was between the little house we rented and the town on Caye Caulker. People were dumping trash everywhere in the vicinity, and when it rained, puddles would fill with bits of refuse. Every couple days, there would be a terrible stench of burning rubber as the garbage was incinerated. 

Meanwhile, we denizens of the good old USA are increasing our recycling and composting efforts here in our local communities. But many recycling processes result in as much environmental harm as production from raw materials would. And high quality processed compost is piling up in the compost center, because a lot of people would rather buy plastic bags of wood chips and topsoil than shovel compost at the reuse center. 

We order Calder Dairy milk delivered to our door every two weeks, five half gallon glass bottles that the Dairy collects, washes and reuses. We've been doing this for five years, which means we've kept 500 plastic or waxed milk jugs entirely out of the waste stream. If I had a cow, I wouldn't even incur the fuel costs of milk delivery. I could just drink right from the teat. 

Well, that's not going to happen, of course. But while Belizeans may not do as well with waste disposal as we do, they produce significantly less waste per person. And using less - not disposing of things better - is really the key to environmental stewardship. 

Yeah. Milk right from the teat. No recycling necessary. 

Extra Part from Sam's IKEA Bed

Day 95: Extra Part from Sam's IKEA Bed

What is it with IKEA? Why are there always too many parts, or too few? And why, when there are extra parts, am I afraid to get rid of them, even after the assembled item has been in use for months?

In just 52 days, we are going to have to decide whether to allow Sam to move himself and his IKEA bed into his sister's bedroom. According to the video about transitioning to college, which I and 200 other parents watched the day before yesterday at the Ball State orientation, a lot of younger siblings move into their older sibling's superior bedrooms the minute the door slams. And Emma's room certainly is superior, being twice the size with twice the windows and twice the closet space. Also the door latches.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this thing is recyclable.

Soccer Magazines and Sports Illustrated

Day 91: Soccer Magazines and Sports Illustrated Magazines

I spent eight hours today driving Sam and his friend Dylan to soccer camp in Bloomington, Indiana. Now I'm sitting in our tiny hotel room in the Ball State University hotel, waiting for Emma's freshman orientation tomorrow. My stomach hurts a little from inactivity and junk food. 

It's a miracle I'm writing this blog today at all. I'm bound and determined to keep my resolution to write every day. I actually took most of these sports magazines to the library free rack last weekend, knowing I wouldn't be home today. When I dropped off a few more yesterday, the 100 or more I'd left on Sunday were already gone. Maybe it's the World Cup, or maybe people just have an infinite appetite for free stuff.

Meanwhile, crises at work make me long (yet again) for a sabbatical year. Why do only faculty get them? If I could take off one year in seven, I could keep working forever. Frankly, vacation days like these just aren't very refreshing.

Did I mention that it was 100 degrees in Bloomington today?

Just One Word: Plastics

Day 55: Plastics (specifically a couple of broken Adirondack footstools)
Large topic, plastics. In 1967, plastics were the wave of the future. Before then, cheese came wrapped in waxed paper and toothbrushes were made from bone and bristles. Now there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the Earth's oceans, and the doldrums is a floating plastic continent.

If the chairs won't give up the ghost,
why must the footstools keep breaking?

But look on the bright side: our teeth are gleaming.

We've had these Adirondack chairs since the summer of 1998, when we moved to Ann Arbor from San Francisco. They cost $12 each and I guess we thought we'd have them one year, then get the real thing. That was back when I hadn't had a full night's sleep in over two years and couldn't think past the next diaper. Sixteen years later, the chairs have faded a little, but otherwise, they're pristine.

If these chairs had the decency to wear out,
I'd feel more comfortable replacing them

Not so the busted footstools. "Bulky plastics" can go right in the recycling bin. Unfortunately, it's not clear that recycling plastic is better for the environment than making new plastic from raw materials because of the high use of fossil fuels in the recycling process.

Better: if you have plastic bottles, packaging or furniture, keep using them.

Best: avoid using or buying plastic at all.

Good luck with that. Avoiding plastics is like running between raindrops.

Cell Phone

Day 51: Cell Phone and Case

The case is harder to give away
than the phone, because it
belonged to my greatly loved
father-in-law, Bill. So much
stuff has great sentimental value

Beam me up, Scotty.

In the 60's, the flip phone was the limit of our imagination, the apex of unattainable high tech, a fantasy as remote as traveling by molecular rematerialization. Now it's a piece of junk in the bedside table.

This is Rich's old phone. He was more Finnish than American in his attachment to it. Finns replace their phones every 74 months, Americans, every 21 months. The environmental consequences are severe.

Although the perky, dumbed-down language of the Story of Stuff: Electronics can be irritating, the analysis and recommendations are spot on. This tour bus we call Earth is heading for a cliff. No matter how well-meaning we are as individuals, legislative change - in this case, extended producer responsibility - is the only way to change course. In the meantime, given the questionable nature of electronic recycling, hanging on to your phone for 74 months - and writing your Congressional representative - is the best thing you can do to avoid poisoning the environment.

Sorry for the high horse. Have you seen the Global Change Research Program's report on climate change impacts, just released this week?

You can view it on your mobile device.

Computer, Printer & Other Electronics

Day 38: Computer, Printer, VHS Tapes, ADATs and More

Fight!

I left the house for less than an hour, and when I came back, I found this:

Rich was moving old electronics out of the studio in a wheelbarrow! His plan was to take it directly to the drop-off center ... without even telling me! 

How will I ever get through an entire year of giving something away every day if my own family sneaks stuff to the dump when I'm not looking?

And all this only a few days before the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the University of Michigan team  up for their e-recycling event. eWaste has those all-too-familiar stats associated with it: Americans are the biggest waste generators, annually we discard an average of 65 pounds of it per person, almost 10 million tons of it end up in U.S. landfills per year, blah blah blah.

Okay, okay, hurt me daddy I'm bad.

On the plus side, if you recycle, a lot of the raw materials can be reused. If you can resist the temptation of the latest shiny object, computers and other electronics have a much longer lifespan than they once had.

The e-recycling event reminded me a bit of a rock concert, what with the orange traffic cones, young men in reflector vests and baseball caps, long lines of cars and semis in the parking lot. They took everything.

Carbon Copies of Checks

Day 32: Carbon Copies of Checks and a Big Tuition Payment

Our friend Derek, inspired by the stuff project, got rid of carbon copies of old checks and suggested I do the same. I found carbon copies of checks dating back to 2002, which neither Rich nor I have looked at or used for any reason. When I do our taxes annually, I look at the check registry to make sure I haven't forgotten a charitable donation. When I forget to tell Rich I've written a check, he can just click on the link in our on-line statement and see an image of the actual check.

Why are we keeping these? Why do we even order checks that have carbon copies? What a waste of trees and storage space. Note to self: next time we order checks, change the style to nix the carbon copies. Thanks for the suggestion, Derek.

Oh, and one more thing we are getting rid of today: big fat tuition payments to Emma's private high school. Was it worth $1900 a month for four years? Who knows? She seems to have turned out well, though, so I can't complain. Would we do it again? Most likely.

On my wish list now that I've got a lot more money: a really good haircut, a gym membership, and a working garage door. On my wish list that I probably won't buy, at least until we've built up our savings a bit: a new car, a Vespa and wooden instead of 15-year-old plastic Adirondack chairs.

Old-Stained-Ratty T-Shirts and Shorts

His navy blue Polo t-shirt
matches his navy blue Polo socks

Day 26: Old-Stained-Ratty T-shirts and Shorts

This is the era of disposable underwear and saggin'. It's no wonder we Americans discard 70 pounds of textiles every year. Last year's outfits are embarrassing.

Parents of growing children must be driving up the average. Sam has decided he wants to dress nicer, which in the world of 15-year-old boys, means khaki shorts, a belt, and socks that go halfway up his calves.

To earn his new clothes, Sam must wash, fold and put away all the clothes he already owns, separating out the ones he has outgrown. This time, there is very little he's outgrown: just two or three pairs of khaki shorts from last summer (now covered with stains) and a couple of old-stained-ratty t-shirts. Oh, and a grocery bag full of mismatched athletic socks.

Instead of throwing his old-stained-ratty stuff away, I put them in the Goodwill pile. In doing my research for this stuff project, I learned that if your old-stained-ratty clothes are too old-stained-ratty to sell to U.S. thrift store shoppers, they'll go to textile recyclers (aka ragpickers) who either ship them to impoverished countries as clothing, turn them into cleaning rags, or sell them as scrap to be turned into sound insulation or carpet pads.

But that's only if you give them to the Goodwill. 85% of the 70 pounds of textiles each of us discards each year goes directly into the garbage can.

What a waste. 

So, does it count as getting rid of something if you just buy something new to replace it?

More Bedsheets

Day 15: More Bedsheets

A man with a baseball cap, a friendly smile and a fringe of gray hair came over to ask me if everything was okay when I had the contents of my car spread out in the parking lot at the Holiday Inn. I explained about my project - getting rid of one thing a day for a year - and he laughed. "If I got rid of one thing a day, it would be 3,000 years before I ran out of stuff."

As I've imagined this project unfolding, I've fantasized about the lightness I will feel as my house is relieved of its burden of stuff. I've imagined that as the year progresses, it will gradually be harder and harder to find stuff to get rid of. I've joked that in a year, we might be living in a tent, with just two of every article of clothing, a camp stove, a mess kit, a sleeping bag, a toothbrush and a flashlight. I thought Rich and I might have some conflict as I cut deeper into the stockpile of stuff.

Then I noticed this:

More bedsheets! These have been tucked away on a high shelf, out of sight and out of mind, for years.  TJ has come and gone, spiriting away sheets for the animal shelter. I've since learned that the Thrift Shop or Goodwill can actually resell any textile to rag pickers, who in turn ship them to third world countries (if they're good enough to salvage but not good enough to sell on the resale market in the U.S.) or recycle them for home insulation (if they're trashed). I know what to do.

But that's not the point. The point is, I own a whole shelf of sheets I had completely forgotten.

Our pleasant modest house

Already day 15, and ideas for stuff to get rid of are crowding my brain. Teapots and tea cozies! Towels! Trays! Trinkets! Tablecloths! Single earrings, silver bracelets, watches! Nail polish, dental floss, perfume! Suitcases, briefcases, grocery bags! Furniture! Pens, games, puzzles! Embroidery hoops, yarns, fabrics! Water pistols, basketballs, badminton sets! Water bottles, vases, dinner plates! Watering cans, composters, tomato stakes! Coolers, canoes, greeting cards! Books! Books! Books! CDs and VHS tapes! Musical instruments and sheet music! Speakers, iPods, receivers! Rugs, baskets, space heaters! An entire rental house! Thermoses and travel mugs! Camping gear! Coffee pots, cocoa sets, food! Toothbrushes, plastic cups, cleaning supplies! Dog crates, leashes, bowls! Pots and pans! Cameras, computers, a GPS! Athletic gear! Hole punch, stapler, protractor, compass, ruler! Gloves, hats, scarves! Picture frames, posters, potted plants! Purses! Pillows! Coats! Flower pots! Binoculars! Shoes!

Look at my house. It's a nice house, but it's not a mansion. We have a nice life, but we're not rich.

Now I have a new fear. What if I get rid of something every day ... and nobody notices?

Oh No!

Day Twelve: Oh No!, Cords, Batteries and Other Miscellaneous Electronic Stuff

I shoved a mass of cords, headphones, batteries and miscellaneous electronic stuff in an empty bread bag and put the bag under the seat of my scooter to bring to work. The innards of a Mr. Bill dog toy were in the bag. Harpo has long since chewed the toy to bits, but this little recording is so funny, I haven't been able to bring myself to throw it away. All the way to work, every time I hit a bump or rounded a corner, Mr. Bill would moan "Oh no!" from under my seat. I laughed so hard, I still can't bring myself to throw it away. It's sitting on the table in my office now, so when people come to me with problems, we can just hit the button.

I was planning to give this mysterious Apple thing to Adam, our IT guy, because I figured he would know what it was for and would be able to use it. He does know what it's for - you can pause and restart Netflix on your computer with it - but he has one already. I decided to keep it, now that I understand it better.

Anything can be recycled or reused where I work. I am getting rid of all the other cords, broken earbuds, dead batteries, plugs that go to nothing, and one lone cell phone. They went in the garbage, in the "property disposition" pile for resale to benefit the botanical gardens, or in the recycling bin. Any one of these items would be worthy of an entire blog post, but I'm certain I have more of all of them lurking in drawers in my house. I still have 353 days to go.

Files

Day Five: Files

What I kept:

• My master's thesis
• My mystery novel
• My chick book
• Handwritten notes and letters from friends and family
• Tax returns

What I recycled:

• Rejection letters
• Old warranties and operating instructions for things I don't own any more, like a cordless phone, a leaf blower and a gas grill
• Bank statements, insurance policies, and anything else that's now available on-line