Even at or five years old in the early 1950s, I can remember rubber bands hanging on the doorknob.  This was because my parents, who had grown up during the depression and suffered through World War II, still saved the rubber bands off the newspapers (no plastic bags back then) and as a convenient place to put them, simply put them around a particular doorknob in our house.  We used them over. 

What has happened to us?  We don’t keep anything any more.  We drink once from a can or plastic cup and throw it in the garbage.  We read the newspaper and throw it in the garbage.  We transport things home from the store in a plastic bag and throw it in the garbage.  We take leftover food and throw it in the garbage.  I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. 

We are a throw-away, disposable society.  It astounds me that I have seen this transition happen in my own lifetime.  Where I used to marvel at people who were alive at the time of the Wright Brothers first flight and have flown in jets, I am now ashamed that I have unwittingly become part of the society that once extolled frugality but now celebrates waste.  Certainly one of the most egregious examples of this has to do with the greatest invention of all time.  Know what it is?  If you have children you do. 

If you have ever had a child, you soon realize that the disposable diaper is the greatest invention of all time.  Well, not really, but it’s certainly the most convenient.  My first child was born in 1971 and, for her, we had a laundry service for which we used the cloth diapers and had them picked up and brought back each week.  For my second child, we succumbed to the luxury of the disposable diaper, mostly because all the diaper services had gone out of business. 

In the United States every year we use 20 billion disposable diapers, approximately 19 million of which find their way into landfills.  I’m not sure what happens to the other million.  I remember our dog sometimes ate them! 

It is estimated that a diaper in a landfill takes between 250 and 500 years to break down.  It will take between 8,000 and 10,000 diapers for one child before becoming toilet trained.  4% of total U.S. household solid waste is composed of disposable diapers which equates to 3.5 million tons of disposable diaper waste each year.  It takes over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine to produce the disposable diapers for one baby each year. 

I can’t, in fairness, suggest a return to cloth diapers for I no longer have children, but … we should.  We should be taking plastic containers as a rule of thumb, to restaurants for leftovers.  We should be taking reusable bags to the grocery store instead of using plastic or paper bags.  We should, as our grandparents ALWAYS did, carefully remove the wrapping from presents and reuse it.  Unfortunately, I, like many of you, belong to the “shoulda, coulda, woulda club” but I’m trying to change and I hope you are too.  I don’t want to look my granddaughter in the eye twenty years down the road and say to her, “I should have.  I could have … but I didn’t.”

Of all the four Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot), Reuse is the most difficult.  Reducing is simply making a decision, usually at the point of purchase, such as buying a cardboard box of pudding mix as opposed to the pre-made, pre-packaged pudding, or ears of corn put in your own canvas bag as opposed to the plastic bag of the store, or putting a water filter on your tap instead of buying pre-bottled water in plastic.  On the other hand, recycling involves identifying those things that can be restructured into new products such as aluminum cans, glass and paper,  but what do you do with those pesky items that don’t fit into the categories of Reduce or Recycle?  The answer is … plan.

When you go to a restaurant, if you usually find yourself bringing stuff home, either bring your own plastic container or at least have them put the take-home in tin foil instead of Styrofoam.  Bring your own canvas totes along when you go shopping and refuse the plastic or paper bags. Don’t throw things away just because they are out of fashion or you have outgrown them.  There are plenty of receiving sites such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army that can use many of your throwaways again. 

Reducing takes a little more work but that’s the point of this whole exercise.  We must change our habits, particularly the bad ones we have resorted to since my parents hung their rubber bands on a doorknob and my grandma saved Christmas wrapping paper.

Next Column:  It’s Cheaper To Keep It, or The Wisdom of Recycling

Chris Belland
Love Your Island Co-Chair