Category Archives: Year Of No Garbage

A Scandalous Post About Underwear. Packaging.

Year Of No Garbage, , , ,

You might think, after writing for, say, eight plus months on a topic like “garbage,” you might run out of things to talk about.

Well, no. In fact, there’s so much to write about, sometimes I feel kind of breathless. I have little piles all over my office of bizarre objects waiting for me to investigate them- a detergent sample, a plastic coated paper raisin container, a broken wire coat hanger.

My Research Pile.
Okay, ONE of my research piles.

I try to keep a list of questions and ideas on my desk, which generally takes the form of forty million little bits of paper and post-its and envelope backs. Among the many notes to myself:

  • What is the difference between biodegradable and compostable?
  •  Investigate what to do with: Broken glass? Burned out light bulbs? Plastic produce netting? Hard plastic with no numbers?
  • Don’t forget to tell the Red Solo cup story!!
  • Why aren’t plastics infinitely recyclable?
  • What about “food recycling” (food cupboards)?
  • Look into history of grocery stores??

Today I’m thinking a lot about packaging. Of course, even for folks who order in the mail a lot, the pandemic has upped the game tremendously. Stay home! Just order everything!

Ordering more through the mail means more packing material, and soooooooo much of packing material is problematic, either because we think it is unrecyclable, is inconvenient to recycle, or it is actually unrecyclable.

But today what’s striking me is not so much the question of whether the shipping materials are recyclable, as how wasteful companies tend to be when shipping items to customers. I’ll give you an example.

These days I try to buy all my clothes at consignment shops, however I do draw the line at underthings. So I ordered a bra and some underwear from Natori, hoping that the priciness would indicate these items would not only be of high quality, but would last a good, long time.

You can imagine my surprise when a box the size of a small microwave oven arrived at my doorstep. Did my underwear really require a box big enough to house an entire family of napping cats?

Two items. One ridiculously huge box.

But it got worse. Because when I opened the box I found a veritable class on packaging science. Each item came in its own separate plastic bag, inside of which was the item on a clear plastic hanger and featuring a hang tag with two layers of paper and a layer of plastic, attached with… more plastic.

Of course it’s clear that this is part of an overarching system that probably includes shipping to actual stores, where they appreciate things like hangers and price tags, not to mention plastic bags to keep product clean and sanitary. What I’m saying is, this particular plastic, in this box, at my house, had served no effective purpose whatsoever. Most people in our culture would probably have tossed all of it into the nearest trash without much thought, because that’s what we’re conditioned to do. And that plastic, then, would be delivered to a landfill where it would give off harmful chemicals that would then try to make their way to the local community’s groundwater.

And it would do another thing too.

That stupid plastic bag and plastic hanger and plastic hangtag would outlive all of us.

A paper AND plastic hangtag

 So I’m trying to see that THIS plastic is meets a better fate, but it isn’t easy. Here’s my plan:

  • The plastic bag will be dropped off at the supermarket plastic bag recycling bin, to be turned into outdoor decking by companies like Trex.
  • The hanger, which incidentally wins for the smallest recycling triangle I’ve ever seen, will go into single stream recycling.
  • The paper part of the hangtag will get burned in our fireplace. The transparent plastic part will get added to our next Terracycle “plastic packaging” box which we pay to get recycled.
  • The Swift Tack (which is the name for the plastic that attaches a hang tag to a garment) will go into my jar labeled “Plastic Doohickeys.” I have yet to figure out what to do with all that stuff. Maybe a macaroni-based art project.

    Can I please borrow an electron-microscope to find this recycling symbol?

On Natori’s website, under a section called “Natori Gives” you’ll find a listing a of many charitable organizations that Natori supports that “empower women, and fight racism and structural inequality around the world.” But all of those issues aren’t islands; they interrelate one with the other… just as environmentalism interrelates with issues of social justice when landfills and incinerators are placed in low-income communities and those of people of color. And women’s issues, racism and inequality have everything to do with this scenario: they are all connected.

I’m not blaming Natori as much as using them as an example of an overall system that needs rethinking. Surely there is a way around plastic hangers and plastic bags. Surely, there is a way to make sure customers receive clean, hygienic products without so much waste. We just need to make connections between these different issues we say we care about and then actually make real change to address them.

 

 

Nobody Wants Your Potato Chip Bags Except Subaru and Mister Fezziwig

Year Of No Garbage, , ,

So. How on earth do you recycle a potato chip bag?

You’d think there’d be more good ideas out there, given how all over the place potato chips are, but no. A website called ThriftyFun recommends using them to “bury your deceased pet parakeet, fish, gerbils or hamster.” But once you’ve said a fond farewell to Kiwi, Bubbles, Biscuit and Mister Fezziwig, what else can you do?

Which is where the Subaru Loves the Earth recycling program could come in.

The idea is a simple one: think of all the single use disposable items you might use in a waiting room— a coffee cup, a chip bag or snack wrapper, some creamer capsules. Now imagine they all will be recycled.

I should point out that most of these items aren’t normally recyclable at all, even through single stream recycling, so this is kind of a big deal.

Here’s how it works: in their customer waiting area, participating Subaru dealers feature three tall, collection boxes: disposable cups, lids and straws go in Box 1, candy chip and snack wrappers go in Box 2, and coffee and creamer capsules go in Box 3. There’s also a display illustrating what happens to these items in the recycling process.

My dealership waiting area… You kind of can’t miss it

But the best part about the program? Is that it works.

I know this because Eric Lendrum, who I got on the phone, is the owner of North Country Subaru. He is JUST the person to ask about the Subaru Loves the Earth program, because he has a lot to say.

“We’ve always had a recycling bin, but it was obvious people didn’t seem to really care,” Lendrum says. People would often throw everything unsorted into the trash, even when the recycling bin was only inches away. Now? His customers are recycling. He credits the success of Subaru Loves the Earth with Terracycle’s eye-catching display, coupled with what he calls “repeat service”: he says customers who come back over time become acclimated to the Terracycle system and use it more; some have even started saving K-cups and wrappers to bring from home when they have a service appointment. They get to be “regulars” of the system.

“It used to take weeks to fill those boxes up,” he says, “now it takes days.”

Lendrum readily acknowledges it would be better if people didn’t use single use products at all, but says that, as a dealership subject to safety regulations and requirements, getting away from single use items is, “frankly kind of impossible.” And the expectations of customers play into it as well. People just don’t want to pour themselves coffee from a big communal pot anymore.

Lendrum sees this Subaru-Terracycle partnership as a step in the right direction, educating customers at the same time as contributing to a good cause: all the plastics that Subaru dealerships mail in to Terracycle get transformed into public park equipment.

The display shows trash magically turning into park equipment

“More garbage turned into less garbage is- I don’t care who you are- a good thing,” he says.

It all started three years ago at the annual Subaru conference at which Tom Szaky, founder of Terracycle, gave the keynote presentation.

“He’s a really interesting guy,” Lendrum says. And the pitch was a compelling one: dealerships who signed up for the new program got starter kits and had their first shipment subsidized. For a company like Subaru, whose brand is so strongly linked to environmentalism, it seemed like a perfect fit.

It occurs to me that when I recently was agonizing over whether or not to fix my aging Subaru, I had fixated on the fact that I was driving a machine fueled by greenhouse-gas-promoting fossil fuel, but it hadn’t occurred to me to consider the way Subaru acts as a company, which might be just as important.

Sure, I knew Subaru marketed itself as a “green” company, but I honestly didn’t know a whole lot more than that. When I looked into it I learned that Subaru has had Zero Landfill Status in their Indiana manufacturing plant since 2004 and tested waste-reduction strategies in partnership with the National Parks Conservation Association at places like Yellowstone and Denali since 2015. According to Lendrum, they also spend a large chunk of each annual convention talking about sustainability.

Lendrum doesn’t think this is just for show. He says it is driven by a corporate mindset that is slow-moving, but passionate. Can a corporation be passionate? I wondered. But if Lendrum himself is any indication of Subaru’s character as a company, then you may just be convinced.

I say this because several minutes into the conversation Lendrum mentions that even more than preserving the environment, his biggest passion is helping children’s charities, and explains that in some ways he sees his dealership as a way to support good works. “This business has to survive or none of this can happen,” he says.

Later I learn that North Country Subaru is a family business: Eric co-owns it with his brother Jared, and both of them learned the business from their father, Ken. It occurs to me that the Lendrum family is a dying breed: the family owned business that knows and cares about its community, and gives back not because they are motivated by marketing, but because they believe it’s the right thing to do.

Terracycle sends me e-mails promoting this program

 

I point this out because I think all these issues are related: being a responsible steward of your community or environment means you aren’t going to mistreat or exploit it. It seems perfectly natural that a family-owned business like North Country Subaru would be very involved in their community, because they live here too. Similarly, we all need to take ownership of the environment, not thinking of it as some big overwhelming earth-scale problem no one can fix, but instead as us taking care of ourselves, our own families, our own communities.

Of course, like Terracycle itself, the Terracycle-Subaru program has limits.

For one thing, it’s expensive. Although the service is free to their customers, it’s not free for the dealership, who pays shipping and processing for each and every box headed back to Terracycle.

Plus, there’s the environmental footprint of shipping all this stuff around. Does that energy expenditure outweigh the benefit of keeping these materials out of the landfill? I don’t know how you figure that sort of thing out.

And of course, it’s extremely limited. It’s a Subaru program, and Subaru dealerships are where you will find these boxes. If you find yourself drinking coffee from a single use cup somewhere else? You are out of luck. You’ll be like my 15 year old who found herself wandering around the mall for hours unable to part with her disposable smoothie cup. (She brought it home.)

My dealership waiting area… You kind of can’t miss it

Participating dealerships are understandably a little wary about publicizing the program.

“I don’t want to be too well known for (it)!” Lendrum laughs, imagining carloads of recyclables appearing at the service-area’s doorstep. “We’re just not prepared for it… That would be a wonderful problem but I’d like to grow into that.” For now he says their customers are welcome to bring items from home, but that’s pretty much all they can reasonably handle.

Just for the record, I find nothing in any of the descriptive material from either Terracycle or Subaru that limits the program to customers. So, you know, if you just happen to live next door to a participating Subaru dealership, and you are brave enough to walk in with a handful of K-cups and snack wrappers, let me know how that works out.

Seductive, no?

For my part, I get all freaked out bringing my garbage to some public place where I may have to stand around for a few seconds being mistaken for a person who is inordinately fond of garbage, or perhaps got lost on her way to the dump. Even though I am a North Country Subaru customer, and even though Eric Lendrum has given me express permission to bring a reasonable amount of my recycling in, I’m still reluctant to do it. I don’t even really know why.

Wait. Yes I do: I’m afraid to look stupid. That’s probably the third drawback to changing behavior through a program like this: comfort level. There are always those of us who are terrified to make a mistake, to look stupid, to feel stupid.

Despite all these drawbacks, Lendrum sees the Terracycle concept as a stepping-stone, a means to an end. Even if the overall impact is relatively small, its intent is to get people thinking, and acting, differently. To push them past that “I feel stupid” part. The next challenge, he says, is making a process like this more streamlined and available in more places, like your local coffee shop for instance.

“You’ve gotta crawl before you walk,” he says.

So I’ll be heading over to Subaru with a collection of empty potato chip bags very soon. If anyone looks at me funny, I’ll just do my best impression of the dear, departed Mister Fezziwig. Works every time.

A Car is Never Just A Car

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Several weeks ago my beloved but well-worn Subaru had a nervous breakdown. Ever since I’ve been faced with choosing one of three options:

  1. For a princely sum, fix my car
  2. For a differently structured princely sum, trade my car in for an electric car

OR

  1. Become a one-car household
I am only half kidding about this.

Ever since this realization sank in I’ve been stuck, both literally and figuratively. I work at home and there’s a pandemic going on, so there hasn’t been a lot of pressure to resolve the dilemma: there’s just nowhere all that pressing for me to go. So my Subaru has sat in the garage, patiently waiting.

Like all of us, I was raised with a whole bunch of cultural expectations about cars, and for me one of them was that every able-bodied driver in the household has their own car.

A car is never just a car. It’s feminism. Or independence. Or adulthood. A flashy car is youth, or youth regained. An expensive car is an assertion of class or success.

Only a few short decades ago one-car households were the norm. A spouse could drop off the commuter at the train station or the bus stop in order to “have the car for the day.” Today a combination of factors- higher costs of living requiring two incomes and poor public transportation systems among them- have lead to new norms.

Recently I spoke with my friend Rhonda on this topic, because for the last 16 years her family has had one car. In fact, she and her husband are the only adults I know in this community who don’t have “her own” and “his own” car. They have one car, and they share it. She says this revelation is sometime is met with puzzlement.

She likens the cultural expectation of multiple car households to that of neatly maintained grass lawns.

“There’s no reason to have all that grass,” she says. “But it’s just what people are used to.” Of course, she points out, the fact that she works at home makes having one car possible. Were she and her husband to both work outside the home, two cars would probably have been essential.

“We always said that if at any time it got uncomfortable we could decide to revisit the question,” Rhonda says. The decision for them was primarily environmental. “I just feel like our footprint on the planet as Americans is disproportionate already.”

And for me, that’s just it. Technically, my car doesn’t figure in to the Year of No Garbage project, because my car doesn’t generate the kind of garbage you can see. On the other hand, I think it would be near impossible to go for months on end thinking about the impact of humans on the environment and never stop to reconsider one’s mode of transport. According to the EPA, transportation was the number one U.S. contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. That fact alone should give everyone who owns a fossil-fuel burning car pause.

I’ve enjoyed the last few carless weeks, actually. Being a hermit has its charms, especially for a writer. Back when we each had our own functioning cars, my husband and I were never compelled to strategize who was going where, when. We just went. I think sometimes modern life encourages us to move so quickly that it can be destructive, not just of our environment, but of intangibles such as contentment, and creativity; do I really need to run out to buy just one thing at the store? Or could I better spend that half hour doing something else? In the last few weeks I’ve really liked being more conscious about our travel than that. I feel… more responsible.

But today I am taking my car in to the shop at last- having decided on option number one after all: fix it. I’m a little sad about losing that sense of interdependence- which we should have all the time but don’t, yet I’m also happy to regain some of my independence as well.

Soon my fifteen year old will be driving and the equation will shift yet again. Maybe by then I’ll have traded my Outback for an electric car. Or a horse-drawn carriage.

Hard to say.