Let’s get this straight, pack rats are neurotic sentimentalists whose refuge in refuse is tiresome and retarded at best. Growing up, I witnessed the condition first hand as my best friend’s Dad lacked the willpower to part with anything. As a result, I spent countless days amongst a wall-to-wall sprawl of boxes of papers, old tables, chairs, suitcases, magazines, newspapers and whatnot pretending that my friend and I’s Donatello and Michelangelo action figures were heroing in Dimension X.
My friend’s house was insane and as a result he became a tidy beast at age 10. Also, I vowed never to be that unkept. But then Al Gore happened. Basically, bashing me over the head with an eco-hammer, Al illustrated that anthropogenic Armageddon is only a hop, skip and a jump away - a looming reality that good ol’ Al mildly deems “An Inconvenient Truth.” If you haven’t seen the shock-umentary, DON’T. You’ll want to take an RCP 90 to anyone who drives an SUV, walk around with a tree taped to your face, or simply call it quits and dive out of a plane without a parachute.
Because of Al, I can’t throw things away anymore without feeling like I’m clubbing a baby seal, or more accurately sensed, wreaking havoc on my homeland. Not only ‘cause I’m clogging the landfills, but also because a gas guzzling trash monster is hauling my shiza, while it spews GHGs OMG WTF?
But fortunately for my sanity and for the wellbeing of those who share time with me, my whims get in the way of staunch eco-practically. I fall short of being a true environmentalist and wind up environmentalish. I eat meat when I’m home with my family in Chicago, I drive my car when I want to entertain my Greek Goddess and I use festeloons of electricity even though the source of my power is Northern Virginia coal.
Did I mention letting my whims run counter to eco-practicality? One such whim of effervescence in which I started with good intentions, but then paved the way to hell with tape, was The Tiki Hut. I began the Hut as effort to kill two birds with one stone. I reasoned that I could (1) cure my ever-present desire to live in a tropical paradise and (2) take 20 unused paper bags and give them a new life by building a Tiki Hut out of them.
The noble intentions would have been well founded if I didn’t underestimate the necessary materials so badly. In all it took: 183 paper bags, 563 yards of scotch tape (21 rolls), and 401 yards of masking tape (eight rolls) to finish the Hawaiian haven. But wait, I’m not totally eco-defunct. Even though I used a Death Star worth of materials here, I can reuse them at the end of the year. The tape can be rolled up into a medicine ball and the paper bag cylinders that form the Tiki Hut can be saved for their next life.
Culinary connoisseur and local food savant, Ileana, wrestles to keep the feeling of ultimate contentment under wraps after feasting her eyes on the Tiki Hut.
I’d like to tell the world there’s a lesson here. That yes, you can absolutely use your old trash to make glorious treasure… so, I’m going to. Why the hell not? USE YOUR OLD STUFF! Make things that I couldn’t because I lacked the creativity.
Also, in that vein, if you need a creative jump-start, check out some of the easy measures I’ve taken to reduce my carbon footprint and make less of a net environmental impact on Gaia’s green earth.
1) Eliminating potential waste: I precycle. Most of our foods still come wrapped in enough plastic to choke a Balrog, or enough Styrofoam to put Gaia into cardiac arrest. So, I try to buy produce that is devoid of plastic and I avoid using the clear produce bags at all costs. Yes, they are usually recyclable, but most bags that are considered recyclable only get one additional use, before they lose their integrity and have to be landfilled.
Side note: If you’re one of those people who requires a produce bag for your bananas, you can jump off a cliff because you’re hopeless, but for the rational souls out there, avoiding clear produce bags is pretty easy. Since most fruits and vegetables require washing anyway, the produce bag/germ shield isn’t really serving any sanitary purpose.
2) Dealing with waste: I cut up my plastics that cannot be recycled or reused. By cutting plastics into one or two inch "squares" (it's definitely not a perfect science) I've got myself some decent pillow stuffing. Plastic pillow stuffing is suprisingly comfortable and also entirely free.
And instead of wasting money on zip lock baggies, I save the ones I inevitably wind up purchasing in the grocery store, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to dodge buying foods that come in plastic.
3) Saying goodbye to a weekly garbage schedule: I throw my food waste outside and let it decompose in the summer, fall and spring. It’s too cold in the winter for proper decomposition to take place, so I’m currently throwing my food waste in the normal trash receptacle that gets landfilled (but at least I’m not using a plastic bag to do so.) Plastics are pretty much the worst behind Styrofoam, when it comes to bio-degrading, so avoiding using them is always a bonus.
Surgeon General’s Warning: Throwing food waste outside is definitely a highly frowned upon idea, so tread carefully. The environmental community would be up in arms with the flagrant disregard of “no-trace” ethics. Yet, I can’t help but feeling like I’m in the right. Until garbage trucks become outfitted with biodiesel engines, or run on natural gas or clean electricity, C02 released in garbage truck transit poses way more of a threat to our planet than a potential invasive species outbreak that could result from throwing food scraps outside.
Fortunately/Unfortunately the winter has given me a reflective timeout since I cannot throw food outside because it will not decompose. I will have a little bit of time to mull over this dilemma before March. Suggestions?
In the meantime, cutting up plastic for pillow stuffing, pre-cycling and recycling has noticeably worked for me. I’ve had to throw out only one five-gallon trash can worth of crap in four months. (It’s a start).
4) Eating everything: I’m one of those people who cannot tolerate a bite of food going to waste. This comes in handy, because a lot of people are not like me and will somehow throw uneaten food into the garbage, or worse they will get Styrofoam packaging to take home like three bites of leftovers from a meal out. I just can’t do that.
Another beautiful side note: My eating condition affords me a lot of fun and delicious opportunities. Back story: For a little over a year now, I’ve generally tried to avoid eating meat because of the ever-pervasive factory farming methods that could dwarf the agony of committing seppuku. But when people around me indulge in delectable animals and decide they cannot eat another bite, I get to be the meat eating hero, making sure that those animals have not lived in vain nor will their savory carcasses be landfilled.
In an ideal world, we’d all have a waste collection method like Tokyo’s on steroids, where everything gets reused without causing environmental detriment. We could thrive in one of William McDonough’s realities where our trash enhances the planet and littering is actually a symbiotic gesture. But since my ideal world isn’t exactly right around the corner, I’m going to have to deal, take some risks, and do the best I can as a consumer to plan wisely.
Quick power up: I’ve lived in the Chicagoland area for 24 years of my 25-year existence. When I moved out to DC last summer and learned of its bag tax, it served as another reminder that the United States’ sustainable ethos is growing. Go us.
