Raping the Earth is not Consequence-free

Oh Mother Earth - Neil Young

Sunday April 22, 2012 is Earth Day! To commemorate and honour the occasion, we'll go green too. The computer is using it's share of electricity but the lights are off and the candles are lit. Okay, it is daytime, but the point is that the question of excess consumption is being considered. Making a commitment to improving our personal impact on the earth is a life long challenge not a 24 hour sprint on a day designated as Earth Day. Ten years from now we might be looking at Earth Day as another commercially generated spending spree like Valentines Day, except this time we will be going out and buying cloth bags and reusable water bottles that we bring home from the mall down the street in our 8-passenger capable vehicles! 

It may actually surprise you to know that the notion of Earth Day had its' inception in 1970 in the United States. A US senator from Wisconsin - Gaylord Nelson - was concerned about the air pollution that was becoming an accepted symbol of a successful industrial economy, oil spills were getting more public coverage, growth seemed to trample on and destroy anything in its' path in the name of prosperity. Change was underfoot, the population as a whole was no longer afraid to challenge what they viewed as wrong. Countless young people had raised their voices in protest of the Viet Nam war. It was felt that this energy could be channeled to alert the government to the need for change in environmental practices. And it worked, the Environmental Protection Agency was born, soon to be followed by the Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Effective or not is a matter of opinion but better than nothing, for the awareness was spreading. 

It wasn't until 1990 that the movement was launched into a global campaign and Canada was a part of the 200 million persons and 141 nations participating in changing how self-centered we had become in our views of entitlement to rape the earth consequence-free. Recycling programs got their start and tree-huggers joined the tree-planters to green up. In Canada, some people got so enthusiastic about the new initiatives that they turned Earth Day into Earth Week and in some cases Earth Month. Now they had the right idea! Caring for the world in which we live takes more than a 20 minutes clean-up challenge in our neighbourhoods once a year. It takes more than one day of using less electricity than normal. More than one day of leaving our car parked. It's not just recycling - it is reducing, reusing too. It's a lifestyle change. But really the lifestyle that we want to emulate is the habits of generations past. Some things I don't think I would want to go back to and certainly some changes have led to a healthier and more comfortable life, however it is our attitudes about entitlement that may need to change. Pens, for example, were re-used and re-dipped into inkwells. The only thing requiring replacement periodically was the nib. Now we toss the whole thing.  As we fight the notion of bringing our own bags to the stores, generations past did this exact thing before the emergence of the plastic bags. For the lack of surplus finances to spend on frivolity, toys were handed down, so were clothes and furniture. In the kitchen, most household tasks were undertaken with muscle power and not just to push the "on" button. Even when the small appliances became more the norm in the typical Canadian household, just around the corner was the repair shop. Today we are expected to throw out the toaster when it doesn't work quite right since it would cost more for repairs than the $8 to buy a new one. Even microwaves which 15-20 years ago cost the consumer nearly $900 for a low-quality oven can now be hand for the paltry sum of $50 - certainly not worth the cost of the technicians time to repair. You also had one family car that was shared among all members. On moisture free days, laundry hung on the line outside to dry - or on lines strung up across the expanse of the basement. There may have been one television for the entire household not one per room. These days it's not uncommon for each member of the home to be attached to a TV, laptop, cellphone and stereo-type device. Not wanting to go back to the dark ages, we have to find a way to make change in other ways. 

We need to go back to the fundamentals of the Earth Day ideal. Reduce, ReUse, Recycle. In that order! 

REDUCE: This isn't just to reduce the amount that we spend in consumer products - although that definitely has an impact. We also need to reduce our carbon footprint in the daily decisions of our life. Consider buying items in bulk to reduce the packaging cost and aftermath. Before you buy that apple marketed as organic from California, consider the apple grown in your own area. The apple from half a world away is leaving an incredibly large carbon footprint on its journey to your local supermarket and it likely matured on the truck during its' journey to look freshly picked just for you. Additionally the criteria on organic-status for the country of origin may be quite different than the standards for quality from your local producers. This applies to non-organic food products as well. If it's not available locally, consider the impact before you lay your money down. Maintain this mindset outside the grocery store and with every trip to the stores you make. 


One of my personal beefs is with the advertising for the new and more efficient appliances like washers and dryers. The new machines purport to use not only less energy but less water as well. But, not only do you have to purchase specialized laundry detergent, you also have to buy cleaning agents (chemicals) to use monthly to ensure efficient operation without foul smells invading clothes. My machine is not one of these High-Efficiency units, I have never cleaned it with anything other than vinegar once a year or so, and when I wash clothes they always come out smelling better not worse! But let's say your disposable income affords you the opportunity to buy this new laundry room miracle. And you leave the appliance department holding your head up high because you are going to be doing your part to "Green it Up". But wait, what is going to happen to the perfectly serviceable machines that you had up until now? Landfill clutter? It's like automobiles, if we all go out and replace our vehicles with the new hybrids, what is to become of the goods we already have. With gas prices what they are, good luck getting fair dollar value for that V-8 guzzler you have. Fill it up with the toaster that has become fickle, the digital clock with one LED light out and the TV deeper than 6" because nobody wants them and drive it all to the landfill. I will keep my washer and moderate my usage of it instead. Like the dishwasher, I will wait for a full load before I start it. When it's irreparable, then I will replace it. I own a laundry team that was built to withstand 20 years of family needs - the high-tech machines of today may last you 10 years - if that, for I've heard a lot of complaints about quality thus far. "Should have kept the old ones" is not an uncommon phrase. And I'm not talking marital partners. 

REUSE: This is a tough one for many people because it requires some common sense. We all know some people who are sorely lacking in that! Do not reuse Toilet paper, Valentine's Day Cards, personal hygiene products, intravenous needles, condoms and gum. Reusing some plastics have been proven to be harmful to our health because of the leaching of chemicals. Sometimes reusing requires a person to be a bit of a crafty handyperson, then you can make a swing from a tire or a bird feeder from a plastic bottle. 

Reusing the plastic disposable water bottles is a practice that I engaged a lot in, I was uncomfortable about the quantity of bottles in the recycling bin every week. Then out came the news that harmful chemicals were leaching into the drinking water with every re-fill and worse if you tossed it in the freezer the night before. My first thought was that it was the moguls of industry that were putting the fear into us to ensure we kept spending. If those plastic bottles were no good....were any other refillable receptacles safe? And why wasn't anyone working to make the plastic safe? Personally I was comfortable drinking municipal water (at home) until the Walkerton Ontario incident. Then we all learned that tap water could kill! At the town level, short cuts, short staffing, human error put us at risk. At home, the age and material of indoor pipes put us at risk. People bought bottled water in droves because they were scared. It can take months or years to find the cause of a disaster like Walkerton that is investigated immediately, but somehow decades after the fact with all evidence long disappeared, scientists can still tell us that the water we drank from the garden hose on a hot summers day in 1972 could cause adverse health effects. I'm just grateful that someone found a way to use my water bottles to make fabric, park bench and objets d'art and thus absolve me some guilt. 

Fear is the also the reason that we bought into the notion of cleaning our homes with disposable chemical laden cloths instead of household sponges. We had special towelettes for each room of the house because we couldn't risk so called cross-contamination. How did we ever managed to survive the past generations attempts to kill us by not washing their hands with antibacterial soap, they didn't disinfect tables, counters or cutlery. Egad! They used not only the same utensils but the same cutting boards for food preparation. And the cutting board was germ sucking wood! A 70 year old relative promptly threw out all the cutting boards dispute she had not killed any of her four children and started to buy disposable cutting boards for poultry. Fear will make us spend irrationally on "un-friendly" products. The fear is fed to us by the media and the companies that market the items. It is beneficial to their bottom line if we are using consumables and replacing them.

RECYCLE: Make this one easy for people and only the most insolent members of society will refuse to partake. I have found that when the choice of a recycle bin and garbage bin are both close at hand, people will stop to consider the proper receptacle for the item. This is behaviour that does a heart good to see. The problem often lies in the difficulty in knowing what is acceptable, especially when it comes to plastics. This number in a triangle is okay but that number in a circle is not. Not being an engineer, plastic is plastic - make all of it recyclable. If the margarine container is, the yogurt container should be also. Something are still too difficult to recycle. In some larger communities this isn't the case, but there is a lot of population outside of major metropolitan centers. Batteries, tires and paint cans are not accepted at curbside, so what is to be done with them? Sometimes in the absence of feasible options, the recourse is the landfill. Granted, if you have a vehicle you can use your carbon footprint to transport your batteries to a metropolitan disposal site...if. 

I am pretty proud of the efforts of my community in its' commitment to lowering the contribution to the landfill site. When we were all provided with an animal-proof composting bin, the curbside collection schedule changed. Weekly the composting and recycling is collected. Every other week garbage is collected. We reduced the household garbage to less than a green garbage bag in two weeks. There is no smell to it, because it is primarily packaging from consumer goods, the smell comes from the food scraps and such that is composted. Compliance to the programs was initially met with disbelief but now stands at 80% all for it. 365 days a year we care for the earth. And did you hear that the orange peels that I am tossing into the green bin are being earmarked for the tires that will be a standard option in the industry. But I need to know, will they smell freshly squeezed as you roll along down the highway? 

I think that people are really starting to get the idea that resources are limited and conservation is key. Whether you subscribe to the Global Warming Theory or not you cannot deny that everything we do impacts the health of our planet, some of which can never be repaired or recovered. Newtons' Third Law of Physics states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Law of Karma states that every action in life creates another reaction which produces another action and so on. Even the Bible itself supports this notion in "as ye sow, so also shall ye reap". They are all saying the same thing. What we do today will affect our tomorrow. If we want a tomorrow as glorious, bountiful and plentiful as our today we must be aware of how are actions will impact the future. The future for those who will still be here after we have gone and for those yet to come.