Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I remember when New York City began mandatory recycling of paper and cans. Nobody thought New Yorkers would ever cooperate, but within a few months everybody was bagging or tying up newspapers and setting them at the curb. Those of us who used to set out redeemable cans for the homeless to collect now put them in recycling bins. It seemed miraculous that citizens could change their behavior so quickly.

San Francisco diverts 70% of its trash from the landfill, but wants to do even better: A City Committed to Recycling Is Ready for More - New York Times.

Jared Blumenfeld, the director of the city’s environmental programs, addressed one of the main reasons the city keeps up the pressure to recycle. “The No. 1 export for the West Coast of the United States is scrap paper,” Mr. Blumenfeld said, explaining that the paper is sent to China and returns as packaging that holds the sneakers, electronics and toys sold in big-box stores.

It's sad that a once-great industrial power now exports mostly scrap and raw materials. To save the planet we all need to reduce what we consume so that we reduce what we trash (and reduce our carbon emissions). But I admire Gavin Newsom for fighting this good fight.

Here in Oakland we recycle paper, glass, plastic and kitchen scraps. The county subsidizes expensive back-yard compost bins for those of us who want to make our own mulch; we also have green bins for yard wastes, kitchen scraps and paper contaminated with food (i.e. pizza boxes and cardboard egg cartons).

In my father's hometown, Sidon, Lebanon, the municipal garbage dump keeps falling into the Mediterranean; it's a long-running, slow-motion environmental crisis. Naples has a similar, horrific garbage problem, and the press is full of reports of massive electronic waste dumps in Africa and South Asia. Being rich is a sickness that causes ill-health to the sea, the soil, the climate, and ultimately to ourselves. Fish, insects and birds are part of an interconnected web of life that supports our own life; we cannot survive long in a monoculture. We need all manner of bugs and life forms we don't even know. Garbage pollutes the world that is supposed to sustain us.

Mundane and stinky, garbage is still important. We can't just "throw it away" and forget about it. We have to confront our garbage if we want to survive as a species.