The kitchen windows are steamed up from canning, the countertops covered with tidy jars of tomatoes. The deluge is under control, for now.
The table is piled with empty glass jars we had saved for future use. They are all that remains of the capers, pickles, fruit juice, jams, and sundry other commercial products we buy from the grocery, the kind of odd glassware every household accumulates. Cabinets overflowing, we finally made the inevitable decision to toss the collection into the garbage, which is to say we have consigned it to the local landfill, that collective midden we are all building.
It occurs to me that recycling is a comforting lie we tell ourselves. Like the greasy hamburger with fries we eat today while promising ourselves a healthier diet tomorrow, it’s a lie that allows us to perpetually defer the inconvenient truth. It’s a lie that allows us to paint our collective lack of will into a vivid palette colored in virtue and redden our backs with self-congratulatory patting, while accomplishing nothing.
There is really no effective glass recycling effort on this planet, and plastic recycling is the joke whose telling lasts a billion years. Should we recycle? Absolutely. (Although reuse might be the better option.) But, of course, the problem lies much deeper than in recycling.
“I don’t buy books; I read only on my computer.” “In my city of eight million, I don’t have a car. I always take mass transit.” “I plant basil for my local pollinators … can my own tomatoes … grow my own corn.” Well, not to squelch enthusiasm for any of these valiant efforts, but they are all piles of greasy comfort lies that weigh heavy on the promise of a better future.
We simply can’t recycle away the debris of our modern lives. It is an endless stream that we are incapable of seeing from start to finish. We stand on the banks and toss our rubbish into the river, wipe our hands on our shirts, and say, satisfied, “Well, that’s that sorted.” And as we turn to go, we glance dismissively at the neighbor who tosses his refuse on the bank.
We can’t single-stream recycle the burgeoning waste of our consumer civilization or dumpster our way to a healthy planet. Ours is a deluge that cannot be controlled. We are the lie we tell.
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Reading this weekend: A new work by David Kline: The Round of a Country Year, a farmer’s day book. Kline is a man who comes closer than most to not telling the lie.
Once in a while the truth penetrates the lies. It’s over 10 years old by now and become a movement of sorts, but perhaps you’ve already been told the story of stuff.
https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/
Thanks, I have seen it. But, it is worth sharing. All fairly depressing when you think, to borrow Amy’s phrase, that any efforts are just damning a river with pebbles.
Well, if enough people toss in enough pebbles at the same time, that might make a difference.
I am not home with my books to check the exact wording, but my favorite cookbook — More With Less, by Doris Janzen Longacre — includes a bit that offers a little hope. In the introduction (I think), she told about a time when hunger in other countries was especially severe, and enough people in the U.S. actually heeded a call to cut back on eating meat that some of the meat we didn’t eat made it into the kitchens and bellies of hungry people in other parts of the world.
Her focus was on good food, celebratory food, and responsible, caring use of food, but it is possible that the idea of many-people-acting-at-the-same-time and actually making a change can extend into other areas of our lives.
It is unrealistic to think that individual actions can solve all our problems with waste/excessive-energy-use/insufficient-recycling/too-much-stuff. I do think, though, that such actions can make a small (even if temporary) improvement. Or is this just another greasy comfort?
Hah! Greasy comforts, indeed. That phrase is going to stick in my head for a long time. I have long thought that my family’s little efforts were like trying to dam a raging river with pebbles – and that it would take a lot more pebbles than we could muster to make any kind of headway.
And here we are, far away in Italy for Joe’s job, having taken the most un-sustainable mode of transportation to get here. This is my current greasy comfort: while here for three months, we walk every day for our errands, buy local food (there is no other option), take buses and trains to travel between towns, and have no air conditioning.
Meanwhile, there is a conference on the Sustainability Mindset in our little town in Tuscany this week, for educators, that aims to help teachers get their students to think about sustainability.
Well, for three months in Italy, I could tell myself plenty of lies (which, I guess, is the problem.) Enjoy!.
You’re absolutely right Brian, that recycling is a comforting lie we tell ourselves believing we are saving the planet. I agree with Amy about your phrase “…they are all piles of greasy comfort lies that weigh heavy on the promise of a better future.” That is a beautiful sentence!
Our lifestyle simply offers us opportunities to take in too much stuff and it’s difficult to stop taking it in and time consuming to keep it sorted out. I have often thought that my life has become an endless process of sorting out stuff. After my parents moved into assisted living we had to sort out the remains of 40 years worth of stuff in the family home. I decided it was time to start doing this in my own home and not wait and make my kids do it.
I find I enjoy donating and shopping at GoodWill and local used clothing stores. It feels good to unburden myself of my home’s crap while looking for treasures among other people’s crap! I suppose it would be in the reusing category. In the process GoodWill provides job opportunities for people that otherwise have a difficult time finding work. I rarely buy much that is new anymore.
On a side note I’m envious of your bumper tomato crop. This year I got plants started late and they are already suffering from blight. It’s not going to be a good crop for me this year so I won’t can as much as usual.
Jody,
Well, I’m not setting myself up as a gardener guru (Amy offers much better advice on her blog). But, I usually go with a “cover my bases” approach to tomatoes. I plant two different times, a month apart. And, I always plant at least ten varieties. My unsophisticated thinking is that the different plant times allows me to escape weather disasters. The multiple varieties, because some fare better than others with wet or dry, hot or cool, conditions. So, something always has a good chance of flourishing. Seems to work….
Cheers,
Brian
The potato beds are already cleaned and the blighted foliage is composting. The driest summer in a long time, yet the blight struck even earlier than last year.
We could probably make apple butter on the trees if this omega block carries on into the autumn.