Circular Economies

To slow the release of carbon into the atmosphere, we can turn to renewable energy and biodegradable packaging, but to stop it, we need to return to a circular economy, with localized nodes all over the world.

Our current global and local economies depend on "natural resources" and "human resources" with the assumption that these are limitless, that the earth possesses or will continue to generate enough raw materials for the endless production and transport of new goods. In fact, many of our global industries depend not just on stable markets, but continuously growing ones, for financial stability. We have now reached the point where this will no longer allow for environmental sustainability.

In order to reach a point of truly circular economy, we need to reuse, recycle, compost, or burn (as fuel) everything we produce. And we're doing a terrible job at that.

While glass and metals can readily be recycled and similar products created, with less energy output than refining new materials, recycling plastic is much more difficult. Plastic, once produced, can't be melted down and re-used in the same form.

Water bottles (#1 plastic), for instance, can be made into fleece sweaters, but not into new plastic water bottles. There's a problem, though: every time you launder that fleece, you release microplastics into your town sewer system, and they end up in the ocean where they're killing wildlife.

Here's a table from Oxford University that summarizes how plastics are generally recycled by communities:

Go here for the full-size image

It turns out, though, that the situation isn't quite as dire, in theory: Plastics labeled  #2, #3, #4, and #5 can be turned into plastic wood. The town of Long Branch started a program last year to recycle plastic bags and wrappers (#4). They promised a park bench after 500 pounds of packaging was collected, and this January, the first bench was installed near Lake Takanassee.

Meanwhile, the town of Middletown, NJ recently opened a styrofoam recycling center, open to residents of the entire county. It only collects styrofoam used in packaging and shipping, not food-grade products, so you still need to get a reusable mug for your Dunkin Donuts coffee, and avoid take-out that's packaged in styrofoam.

There's a breakdown, however, been theory and practice. Between 1950 and 2015, the amount of plastic products produced annually rose almost 200-fold, from 2 million metric tons per year to 381 million metric tons, and only 9 percent of that was recycled.

We need to do better, and when it comes to plastics we need to address this in several different ways.

Governments need to enact carbon taxes to encourage corporate and individual consumers to use less carbon, by making it more expensive.

Producers of plastic products need to do a better job of making containers out of more easily recyclable products when possible, researching and developing biodegradable containers, and avoiding excess packaging.

Consumers need to send a message through individual purchases and buying habits that we don't want plastic. We need to:

• stop buying bottled water and other products packaged in single-use plastics
• refuse excess packaging, for instance when we buy loose produce
• advocate with local and state governments to enact plastic bag bans, and meanwhile make the choice to use reusable bags for our shopping
• boycott Dunkin Donuts and other corporations that still use styrofoam instead of paper hot drink cups, and tell them why

... and more. Those are starting points, not end points. We need to move to an economy where everything we produce can be repurposed in some way. It's going to take imagination and persistence. If we don't do it voluntarily, the effects of climate crisis will force the issue.

What Will You Do? A Birthday Request

I’m turning 55 this month. Facebook has been encouraging me to set up a donation link and ask all my friends to contribute to my favorite cause. Instead, I’m asking my friends to do something about the environment.

Climate change has become a huge problem, and we are all going to be affected in our lifetimes. You don’t need me to tell you all the ways we’re doomed.

I’m not going to tell you what to do — we need action in so many different spheres and at so many different levels. If you’re going to keep up a commitment, it has to be to something that you feel is meaningful and that you are comfortable doing. 

We need government action, we need corporate action, and we need individual action. We need carbon taxes, we need businesses to adopt environmentally responsible processes, we need better public transit, we need better pedestrian and bike routes, and we need to stop consuming and wasting so much stuff at the individual level.

Maybe you’d be comfortable making a weekly phone call to an elected official — local, state, or federal — urging them to take positive action on some issue concerning the environment. Maybe you hold stocks, and you can try to persuade the corporations you invest in to take more environmentally responsible actions. Or you are vested in a retirement account and you can persuade its managers to disinvest from fossil fuels.

Maybe you want to try giving up fast fashion, spending more money on fewer items of clothing that will last longer. 

Maybe you want to try eating lower on the food chain, or cutting back on beef and dairy, which are worse for the environment than vegetable sources of protein but also worse than chicken and eggs.

Maybe you think it would be an interesting challenge to give up single-use plastics, whether water bottles, take-out containers, or soap and shampoo bottles. Maybe you can persuade your favorite take-out place to switch to paper containers. Maybe you’ll get a reusable coffee cup and get your coffee shop to put your morning brew in it instead of into paper or styrofoam.

Maybe you want to turn down the heat and put on a sweater, or in the summer turn up the heat and put on a fan. Maybe you can buy your electricity from a company that uses renewable sources, or even put solar panels on your roof.

Maybe you’re willing to give up your lawn, and the chemical fertilizers and pest control chemicals you’re using to maintain it, and instead create a yard full of native flowers and shrubs that will attract bees and butterflies and birds, and native trees that will do those things plus sequester carbon and provide summer-time shade that will reduce your need for air conditioning.

Maybe you believe environmental justice should be our biggest priority, and you want to volunteer for a few hours a month with an organization that helps both people and the environment.

Maybe you’re contemplating a move, and you want to choose a new home based in part on environmental criteria: well insulated? In a multi-unit building, so it can share heating and cooling via walls adjacent to other units? Close to public transit so you can take a bus or train to work or to school? Close enough to work so that you can walk or ride a bike?

My own commitments for the year are to recommit to a number of environmentally responsible habits, including use of public transit, avoiding take-out, and keeping my shopping for anything other than necessities to a bare minimum, and to get back to blogging about environmental issues. My goal will be to post weekly. Once a month, I’ll tell you what I am doing myself to help the environment. In other posts, I’ll provide more information about the things I’ve mentioned above, along with links to sources, as well as other ideas about things we can do to make the world a better place, big as well as small.

Do I have 55 friends who are with me? Please post in the comments section, or if you’d rather be anonymous, message me. Thank you.

Green Your Holiday

'Tis the season... of frantic shopping, and of appeals from "green" companies to shop with them rather than the other companies.

Maybe you want to put the brakes on all that consumption. I'm not suggesting you just say "no" to all gift-giving, but there are ways to make it more productive.

1. Give food that you know the recipient will enjoy that's maybe a little fancier and more environmentally friendly than what they'd have consumed anyway. Organic chocolates, fair-trade coffee or tea, a gift certificate to a farmer's market, a month's pick-up from community supported agriculture, a gift certificate at the neighborhood health food store.

In New York, some greenmarkets sell "wooden nickels." You pay with a credit card (there's a small fee that goes to their overhead) and you can buy wooden tokens worth $5 each to use later or give as gifts. Other cities have similar programs.

2. Give time. Commit to helping a friend or family member with cleaning, maintenance, a special home project, or a home-cooked meal.

3. Give donations in people's names, to charities they (and you!) support. Or commit an amount, and have a conversation about where they'd like it sent.

4. If you want to give material gifts, make them yourself or think hard about where you buy them. As with other purchases throughout the year, try to limit shipping, packaging, and other kinds of waste.

5. Recycle wrapping paper: easiest to do if you use bags and tissue paper with no tape. Or buy or make reusable cloth wrapping bags, or use the comics pages from the newspaper, or re-use cardboard boxes and decorate them.

Going Green As Moving Target

Two years ago, I embarked on the project I called "Ten of Tens" -- ten days on each of ten different habits to make changes in the direction of environmental sustainability. My projects included packing lunches to avoid take-out (and all the plastic involved) at work; eating more local food; using less water for dishwashing and in the shower; learning about the environmental impact of the foods I eat; switching to fair-trade coffee, tea, and chocolate; not buying things packaged in plastic; and buying less stuff.

It was a partial success. I didn't eliminate take-out, which is terrible for the planet and the body, but I cut back. I continued doing most of my shopping at the supermarket, but I made an effort to get out to the farmers' markets more. I've been almost take-out free this year, but then again I'm on sabbatical, and my desk is five feet from my kitchen. Buying local is easier here in the UK, where everything in the supermarket is marked with point of origin, but I STILL don't get to the farmer's market enough. And I don't know, but I think it's gotten even harder to avoid bringing home plastic packaging. At Sainsbury's, even the recycled toiled paper is wrapped in plastic.

But I keep trying. When I'm finished with the sabbatical I'm planning on buying some stainless-steel food containers for packing lunches -- I've been using mason jars, and they're heavy, and they break.

As of right now, today, I'm going to try to stop first at the farmer's market every time I go shopping.

Another of the issues I wrestle with is how much clothing I own. The 333 Project has been on my radar for a while, and it's a great idea: limit yourself to 33 items of clothing, including accessories, shoes, outerwear) for three months.

But exercise clothes are excluded from the accounting, as are pajamas, undergarments, and "in-home lounge wear." I do a lot of different kinds of physical activities, and I own almost as many items of clothing for exercise as I do for the rest of life.  I've been trying to avoid having a separate wardrobe for all the different activities. And you get 33 items of clothing for each season -- so in a three-season climate, that's 99 articles of clothing.

I've been trying to overlap as much as possible, for instance buying hiking clothes that look neat enough to wear in town. I dress a lot more casually when I'm writing at home than when I'm teaching, but it doesn't seem fair to allow an entire additional wardrobe of casual clothing, so I'm trying to bring my casual and work clothes closer together. There's a decluttering recommendation that you only buy an item if you're getting rid of another item; I've been trying to go two-for-one, though not always successfully.

Moving toward sustainability isn't a one-shot deal. It requires continuous adjustments and renegotiations. I'm trying to do better each year; it's hard, and I fail a lot, but I know I'm doing better than if I didn't try in the first place.

Green Christmas

It seems early, but then I want to get this post up before Black Friday. Christmas has become, for many people, a holiday of massively commercial proportions. Hannukah isn't far behind. With the commercialism comes a massive environmental impact. So here are some ideas about how to minimize the impact.

Presents

Consider making gifts, if you can, or buying from a craft market featuring the creations of local artisans, rather than buying on Amazon (with all that shipping and packaging) or Walmart (of the dismal labor record). Think about gifts that the recipient can use and enjoy -- food? -- rather than things that will need to be stored indefinitely.

Food

Food waste is a major contributor to over-consumption, with estimates for how much of our food we throw away ranging from 30 to 50 percent. As you plan your holiday meal, or meals, think about food waste. We all cook extra to make sure everyone will have enough to eat. Can you make plans to freeze leftovers for future use? Make the turkey bones into soup, maybe even with leftover vegetable side dishes?

Packaging

There's the packaging that stuff comes in. Would you consider choosing purchases based on the amount of packaging? Amazon comes to mind again. But making stuff by hand or buying locally also has good potential to reduce packaging. Then there's wrapping paper. We keep a box of used wrapping paper; other families use cloth wrapping bags and reuse them every year; others use the comics section of the newspaper for wrapping.

Travel

With family in Europe and across the US, I travel a lot, and I often end up flying instead of using ground transport, and I often travel by car rather than on trains or buses. So I feel a bit hypocritical including this category. But the point is for everyone to think about areas where they can cut back, and different things will work for all of us. Think about carpooling or, if possible, taking a train or a bus to your destination. Shopping locally can also limit driving time.

Chocolate

The Hershey corporation has made a commitment to ending the use of child labor in its source chains... by 2020. You can end child labor in your own chocolate today by purchasing fair trade chocolate.

Happy holidays, y'all.

Do Plastic Bag Bans Do Any Good?

The short answer: YES.

Mother Jones reports that California has just banned plastic bags, but says "hold the rejoicing."

The article contains a lot of good information: you have to use a paper bag three times to reap an environmental benefit over plastic, when production costs are taken into account, and you have to use a cotton bag a whopping 131 times.

But if you shop twice a week, you'll get through those 131 uses in just over a year.

I can't speak for suburban folks with big cars to bring home huge loads of groceries, and big pantries and closets and freezers to store weeks of groceries at a time, but as a long-time city dweller, I can tell you I shop at least twice a week.

Some cloth bags might not last a year, particularly once they've gone through the wash a time or two, but I've had many cloth bags for a decade or more.

But here's what I think is the key statistic from the article: in studies in Ireland and California, 40 percent of shoppers didn't use a bag at all after bans or fees were imposed.

That blows all the re-use statistics out of the water.

Think about it: how many times have you left a convenience store with two items in a plastic bag, only to take one item out immediately? or both? Even if your community doesn't ban bags, think about just saying "no" to the bag next time. Or pick up the phone and call your local elected official and tell her or him to add a bag ban to the legislative agenda.

40 bags in 40 days

My friend Melanie from my home town posted a link on Facebook the other day to the 40 bags in 40 days challenge: Get rid of excess stuff that's lying around your house, one bag a day for forty days. A "bag" is loosely defined -- grocery bag or hefty or anything in between, whatever works for you.

Meanwhile, the New York Times ran an article claiming "you probably have too much stuff," and I was pretty sure they were right, about me as well as about many middle-class North Americans. When I lived in Shanghai in 1987, many families lived in one-meter-square apartments. They probably didn't have enough stuff. But those of us living middle-class first-world lives aren't likely to have that problem.

Yet my first thought was classic Manhattan one-upmanship: "I might have a little excess, but I don't have 40 bags of stuff to get rid of."

But then Melanie mentioned books. Hmmmm.

And then I thought, "there's no way I can do this on 40 consecutive days."  And so I decided I'd just count those 40 days as they come.  And if I clear out more than a bag on a given day, I'll count days for bags. And if I run out of stuff before 40 days is over, well, fine.

I should add that I'm not advocating a completely spartan life. I'm lucky enough to have met three of my four great-grandmothers; from one, I have a silver necklace, from another, a handmade doll, from the third, a set of dishes, silverware, and some furniture. Yet I buy stuff, mostly books, sometimes clothes, and many of our holidays are organized around gifts, i.e. acquisition of more stuff, and somehow it just accumulates.

Day one (March 6) : It took me around five minutes to fill a big canvas bag with books squirreled away in various corners of the living room and entryway.  Some were duplicates given as gifts, some I've been saving in case I want to read again. Ready to go.

A friend of Melanie's mentioned paperwork -- another thing I hadn't thought of.  I've got crazy piles of printouts of articles lying around related to essays I think I'm going to write some day... or worse, essays I've already published.

Day two (March 9): paper.  Not all the paper, but a big box went to the recycling bin. It's really freeing to think in terms of starting the project, but not feeling compelled to finish it on a given day.  I've made progress, and it may be days or weeks before I make more progress -- but that doesn't negate what I've accomplished.

Day three (March 10): the bathroom. Once again, it's helpful not to have to worry about completeness, but just get something done. Old sunscreen, expired medications, empty packages of OTCs. The FDA has helpful information on how to discard old medicine (note: don't flush).

Days 4-5-6-7-8-9 (March 15): four bags of books, a huge bag of clothing, and a crate of toys. Spring break is coming up, so it's a good time to drop off dry cleaning -- and asking myself if I really wanted to pay to clean a given item helped make decisions about keeping things, or not, whether well-loved and worn or not-so-loved and never-worn.

Day 10: The sister-in-law of the mom of a classmate of The Offspring's (phew!) is a second-grade teacher and would love the kids' books for her classroom. Yay! Yesterday's clothing went to the textile recyclers at the farmer's market, along with the compost.  Also: a pile of half-read magazines to the recycle bin, and I'm counting that as "a bag."

The break means I'll have time to go through some more closets, drawers, and shelves in coming days; I'll update, eventually.

Folding Scarves

It's been a long few weeks, and I spent some time this evening folding scarves and shawls.  I remembered where and who they came from over the past thirty years, and felt the different weights and textures.  It was meditative and soothing.

Sitting at my desk or in a meeting gets chilly, and covering my neck is a quick fix.  In the classroom I move a lot more: shedding a scarf as I warm up is much less of a production than taking off a sweater or a blazer.

Amidst the smoothing and folding, I had to admit that I have a whole collection of scarves.  This was a bit of a shock, as I generally prefer one or two functional, versatile, well-made items to a drawer or closet full of options.

A corollary: I have a hard time getting rid of things.  I try not to buy things if they're not going to get used often and last a long time, and so when I've gotten something into my home, I feel kind of committed to it.

(Possibly an aside: The alarm clock I bought when I started college just went to the recycling pile.  It finally got dropped one time too many.)

A couple of years ago I bought a sweater that felt fine in the fitting room, but when I wore it for the first time it turned out to be itchy.  I've felt compelled to wear it anyway, in a penitential kind of way, and then told myself I should keep it, since after all I sometimes use it.

But I'm trying to give myself permission to get rid of stuff like that.  And so I've finally put it in the donation bag in company with the shrunk and the ripped and the stained.

But not scarves.  Lovely lightweight wool that a friend brought back from Italy, fringed purple from an aunt in France, blue velvet I splurged on at the British Museum shop.  A circle of black, knit by my mother-in-law; greens and purples on cotton, left over from wardrobe after a film shoot.  Wispy teal from India by way of a shop on Second Avenue.

Deep blues and purples on silk, bought during a year teaching in Shanghai, so long ago it sometimes seems like a dream.  Yet deeper in the past: burgundy wool woven with gold threads from the family I lived with as an exchange student in Switzerland.

I enjoy the textures, the colors, the warmth.  I'm going to depart  from principle without apology and let these things give me pleasure.

Where to Shop

The old mantra, reduce, reuse, recycle, begins with "reduce."  As in, better to avoid shopping altogether.  Learn to live with less.  Buy things that will last, and then get them repaired rather than replacing them as they wear.  But we do need food, shelter, clothing.  We need tools to cook with, we need furnishings for our homes.

The place to start, then, is buying used.  Double bonus: you buy something without the environmental costs of new manufacture, and you keep an item out of the landfill.  Some places to start: Better World Books, Craig's List, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, your local thrift or consignment shop.

When used won't do, you can shop from a store with explicit commitments to environmentally friendly materials and good labor practices across the supply chain.  Some of the better options:

American Apparel

Eileen Fisher

Hanna Anderson

NAU

Patagonia
Seventh Generation
simple shoes
Sustainable NYC
Ten Thousand Villages
World of Good

Among manufacturers that sell clothing in the US, only H&M, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Abercrombie and Fitch have signed on to the  Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

Green America recommends fabrics made out of bamboo, organic cotton, industrial hemp, recycled polyester, soy silk or cashmere, and wool.  They also publish The National Green Pages, a directory of green businesses, as well as a newsletter with information on fair trade practices across a variety of industries.

In the absence of transparency about labor rights, industrial methods, and green materials, we all need to keep reading about corporate practices and putting pressure on individual companies to improve their records.

Sometimes You Have To Give Up

Item one: a metal laundry drying rack purchased about three years ago, a few months after which the screws holding it together started falling out.  I replaced the first, and the second, and the third... and it hung on for a while, remaining useable.  And then a couple of weeks ago about five of the screws fell out all at once.

And I gave up.  I realized the amount of time I could spend trying to keep that thing fixed just wasn't worth it any more.  I took the thing downstairs and threw it in the recycling bin.

At the moment, we have no drying rack.  I'm thinking about possible creative solutions, alternatives to buying another rack that will have to live in the corner of the bathroom.  Maybe several lines of cord strung near the ceiling of our half bath?

Item two: a pair of long-finger bike gloves.  I put them on yesterday and discovered I'd let them mildew after wearing them in the rain.  They're so beat, if I try to wash them, they're likely to disintegrate.  They went in the actual trash.

I've looked in a couple of stores for a replacement, but haven't seen anything I like.  I have a pair of leather gardening gloves I've owned for years.  I might try those as an alternative for days cold enough I want to cover my fingers but not cold enough for winter gloves.

Yes, sometimes even I throw something away.

Confusing the Bystanders

If you're going to commit to buying used, for economic and/or ecological reasons, you might find yourself walking through Chinatown with skis, boots, and poles on your back, on a sunny 45-degree day with no snow in sight anywhere.

Photo: Douglas Morse

And the responses from bystanders and passersby are likely to run the gamut from amused to mystified to all kinds of baffled.

As the Talking Heads put it, "You may ask yourself, Well, How did I get here? / Letting the days go by, water flowing underground."

Incremental Change

The philosopher W. V. O. Quine wrote that human knowledge forms something like a vast spider web, rather than a hierarchical structure based on some first principle, and that new discoveries in the sciences or the humanities change the web at one small point, but from there, additional revisions ripple outward.

I read Quine's Web of Belief back in college, in the last millennium, and my copy of the book is at my office (closed up tight in anticipation of the impending storm), so my memory may be faulty and is certainly dim, but I've always imagined a web of human knowledge that's always rippling slightly at a variety of different points as artists and intellectuals and scientists cogitate and create away.

I also like the metaphor of a web as a way of thinking about our own indiviual beliefs.  We learn new things, and they cause slight shifts in our own thought-webs, with the potential to ripple outwards across our entire thought-webs, with time and the willingness to be open to new ideas.

When it comes to ecological thinking, small steps are an important beginning.  But changing our habits, ever so slightly, has to be a constantly evolving process, with change leading to change and shifting beliefs constantly challenging our webs.

Putting food scraps in the compost instead of in the trash might get you thinking about wasting less food in the first place.  Recycling paper for municipal pick-up might lead to the realization that batteries shouldn't go in the trash, either.

The old green mantra is "reduce, reuse, recycle."  Note that "reduce" comes first.  Recycling is important, reusing things even better, but for real impact to occur, everyone needs to reduce consumption in the first place.

Green Resources

Although the New York Times has dismantled its environment desk, the BBC and the Guardian both have web pages devoted to reporting on the environment, as does the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, if you can read German.

Magazines with extensive environmental coverage include the  New Scientist and the Mother Jones,  blog The Blue Marble.

More specialized web sites for environmental coverage: 

Bike Blog NYC
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Environment Magazine
Environment News Service
Green America
Grist
Slow Food USA
Treehugger
Union of Concerned Scientists

Please add your own favorites in the comments.