Going Deeper

A children’s programme looks at the decision facing a boy who has been playing with the grass cuttings left by his father’s mowing: should he put them in the bin or in with the smelly compost? By the end of the programme the decision is made, inevitably, for the compost bin and the comment is made: ‘Tommy has learnt that the compost, though smelly, is not waste but garden food’. For many of us we also need to change the way we look at waste.

It is no great revelation to say that we live in an incredibly wasteful society. If you compare the way we live now with even just a few generations ago it becomes apparent how rapidly this culture has developed, with so many things now being ‘disposable’. It is amazing to think that the average person in the UK throws away their body weight every three months! When you add this up we find that about 335 million tonnes of waste is created in the UK every year.

It is easy to think, ‘oh it won’t make much difference if I just throw this little thing out’, but when everybody else is also thinking that, the result is huge piles of rubbish. Indeed it is sobering to think that just under 90% of the rubbish produced in the UK is dumped at the landfill site. This might be a surprise considering the intense focus on recycling, but, whilst households are now recycling over 30% of their waste on average, it is non-household waste that is lagging way behind. Landfill sites are not good. They leach toxins into the ground. They create noise and problems through increased traffic. And, they contribute to climate change because the rotting material produces both carbon dioxide and methane.

In this waste category of Living Lightly the focus is, of course, on the three r’s of the environmental movement: reduce, re-use and recycle. The re-use and recycle sections have lots of suggestions for different things that we can do. What you will also no doubt notice is that we’ve added ‘refuse’ to the reduce category. If you consider the mainstream messages regarding the environment, it is noticeable that they focus on recycling: there are few voices that are prepared to challenge the culture of consumerism that we live in. It is almost too obvious to say that if we bought less then we would have less to get rid of, whether by recycling or throwing away! In many ways, then, this waste category goes hand-in-hand with the shop category.

So, we must learn how to say ‘no’ and to ask ourselves whether or not we really need something before we buy it. With that in mind, the suggestion never to let yourself ‘impulse buy’, but always to go home and think about it first, is one of the most practical things we can do. Alongside that it is helpful to stop seeing shopping as a leisure pursuit and to find other things to do with our spare time.

Dave Bookless encourages us to see waste as a spiritual issue. In his book Planetwise he writes: ‘perhaps the single most effective step I have taken in terms of avoiding waste is to try to pray every time I put something in the bin. As I do so, I thank God for the natural resources that have created the item, and reflect on whether I have been a good steward. Often my prayers end up as guilty confessions, as I have to admit my careless wastefulness again…. Sometimes my anguish is not personal so much as frustration with a culture that dictates I can’t buy things that aren’t covered in polystyrene and plastic, and I simply say sorry to God for what we as the human race have done in taking his world for granted’.

Ruth Valerio, 10/05/2009