Why the environmentalists have got it wrong

Re-think, redesign, re-purpose, reclaim, re-use, restore...recycling is so far down my list.

Recycling employs industrial processes similar to those employed in the initial fabrication of products, processes that involve and release heavy metals and toxins into the everyday products we use up close and personally: shoes, food-ware, clothing, carpet. There is something already wrong with the system that recycling only temporarily mediates.

The Natural-Human World

Likewise, although reducing and re-using do not increase the number of potentially harmful products that enter our communities, these practices allow the toxic items to remain in our system, and our community is just that a system. Exactly like the ecological systems that make up the natural world, where water and salts and nitrogen and soil and plants and animals work together in complex, diffuse harmony, the human world undeniably participates in that system as well. For as much as we try to simplify the system by only growing one crop (corn), or by only producing one kind of by-product (that which we toss into landfills), we are only fooling ourselves. We do not live in a world apart. For as much as we create man-made reserves of concrete, asphalt, buildings and sidewalk, we only hurt ourselves inasmuch as we do not plan for the natural elements that must be a part of our existence. It is not the man-made world versus the natural world; it is one natural-human world. Living in a city that involves not natural elements, we only breathe chemicals and metals that build up in our system overtime. We are removed from interaction with any of the natural elements that would help to remove these toxic-in-high-level elements.

For the longest time, I have acted as best I could within my understanding: that we need to reduce waste, take it to zero. However, this does not respond to even the way nature works. Low impact and no-impact have their place, but even nature does not work this way. When a plant wants to reproduce or reach for the sun, it sends off as many seeds as possible, it shoots forth as many buds for which it has resources. We can be like the plants, too. We just need to send of seeds and buds that rather than destroy the environment act as builders and nutrifiers to the natural-human world.

We need products that respond to these facts. We need products that respond to the truth that we do not live in a world where nature can chew and up and digest whatever we spit out. We need products that do not constantly poison our systems as we wear, walk on, eat with, or drive in them. We need to re-design everything, and if we do that, we will have plenty to sell. There will be no competition between environmentalists and capitalists. They can work hand in hand.

For the time being, I cannot afford (1) to spend the time researching products that already do what I suggest here--maybe someone knows a website--and (2) buy any of the products once I find out what they are. It will take a cultural revolution to move in this new direction. We will need companies, advertisers and other cultural producers to catch the vision of how to sell this new world. Then, maybe all of these products will be abundant enough and cheap enough that I can get them the way I get everything: second-hand from a friend or co-worker.

In the meantime, I will continue to do the best I can by reducing and re-using the articles I use that are manufactured with current industrial practices.

Further Reading:

Cradle to Cradle, North Point Press

William McDonough and Michael Braungart

Natural Capitalism, Little, Brown and Company

Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins,

[Next post: Why I can't buy new, or, the necessity of a bohemian aesthetic in a post-industrial, pre-environmental society]