If There's No Such Thing As Away...

If there's no such thing as away, how come that's where all the blame goes? (Non-E-prime statements, obviously. In fact, the rest of the post doesn't follow E-prime strictures, either, not until I have time to edit out the verbs, "that is.")

I want to share a quote I uncovered in Janine Benyus's marvelous book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature (I mistyped the subtitle--well, typed in a subtitle of a different book--"Remaking the Way We Make Things," which actually corresponds to another delightful, world-changing book, William McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle). I'd started hearing myself say repeatedly to myself and others how this book was becoming steadily obsolete, twelve years since initial publication now, but really, the message of this book hasn't reached a wide-enough audience. Sure, the science might have progressed...

(Start parenthetical rant:) Solar cells are now something like 43% efficient, but she quotes, in an epigraph to a chapter, a news release dating from 1994!, that states, and I'm including the whole thing, too, because it's an adorable quote, as well, though not quite the original focus of my post:

"'Pond scum' may be a synonym for 'primitive,' but the tiny organisms that compose it easily beat the human state of the art when it comes to capturing energy from the sun. Some purple bacteria answering to that unflattering description use light energy with almost 95% efficiency--more than four times that of the best man-made solar cells."

On one level, this says a lot about the inaccuracies and false assumptions underlying the capacities of "primitive," a word that traces its etymology to the un-stigmatized concept of beginnings, one-ness, originations...prime, primal, first. However, it also reminds us that the scientific and inventive processes of agricultural-industrial civilization are just that -- innovative. We may have detached ourselves from many useful instincts, but civilization is not a cut-and-dried failure to discard immediately, without looking back, as some, such as primitivist author Derrick Jensen, encourage, and at all haste, at that. (Hmm...I have a lot to say about his Premises to his most recent work, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization; Vol.2: Resistance, which complete work I have not yet had a chance to read, only this year having gotten around to A Language Older Than Words, a strange, sometimes loony, sometimes beautiful, powerful, poetic, ruminative work. As such, I think I might just discuss my qualms with those premises tomorrow.) Our culture has some awfully amazing accomplishments to its credit, and it continues to achieve them, as in more and more highly-efficient solar cells with better and better low-cost production. Though, of course, we should stop a second, as with any thought process in our consumerism-run-amok society, and ponder, "Do we really want to figure out how to make things better (Well, yes, the confluence of dismal planetary situations needs amelioration and remediation, but for our purposes here, I meant 'better things'), or would we end up better off if we learned once more how to require less?"

Requiring less has really bugged me a lot lately. Everything seems tied up in ways to get us to want more, and I feel this very acutely, half-trapped in these processes I do not wish to condone, not consciously, at least, as with any condonation. (With condone defined as "giv[ing ] tacit approval to" and tacit defined as "understood without being openly expressed; implied," using dictionary.com/Random House Dictionary. No, no, not doubting the intelligence of my readers, just getting a refresher myself. A long time now has passed since I had to worry about my words so carefully, to alleviate, by my worrying, such looming nightmares--not really--as the SAT. The crucial lesson of humility reminds us that it never hurts to learn the same lesson twice, multiple times, even. How's this for an exercise in meditation, the perception of relative urgencies: Try feigning ignorance next time your boss tells you how to do a routine task you've executed competently for what seems like forever. Perhaps she or he will offer insight or nuance to the task. Forgive this person, this other being, for doubting you. As a result, perhaps you'll find you've expanded your repertoire, if not in the nuance of the skill, at least in the limits of your patience. And godspeed!) My thinking about this has a lot to do with my recent reading of a small but feisty young-adult novel a friend passed on to me last month. Titled The Gospel According to Larry, this story involves a young man whose alter-ego goes haywire, the culture(s) surrounding his alter-ego, actually. Nevertheless, he stays true to the core tenets of his voluntarily simplistic lifestyle. He owns a mere seventy-five possessions! If he acquires something new, he either has to pass it along or send another of his belongings on its way. If he feels tempted to purchase a new item, he has to grapple long and hard with how much the item is really worth cluttering up his life just that bit more. I've felt incredibly jaded the last couple years. Something about this book, combined with this summer of productivity and other changes to my life this year, compels me to make more of an effort to simplify my life, perhaps even down to this drastic measure. Why not? (End rant; back to the initial point...)

(A refresher: I had started saying, "Sure, the science might have/has progressed...")

...but the idea of mimicking the planet's ancient processes, rather than applying our own hubris to the design of processes and materials, still has quite the following to amass. Onwards! Yeah...anyway, the quote:

"Though environmental policy makers have focused on the growing glut of garbage and pollution, most of the environmental damage is done before materials ever reach the consumer. Just four primary materials industries--paper, plastics, chemicals, and metals--account for 71 percent of the toxic emissions from manufacturing in the United States, according to the researchers. Five materials--paper, steel, aluminum, plastics, and container glass--account for 31 percent of U.S. manufacturing energy use."

-John E. Young and Aaron Sachs, authors of The Next Efficiency Revolution: Creating a Sustainable Materials Economy (Heh - I typed, "Sustainable Energy Revolution" -- Oh, propaganda, how you get to poor, tired souls!)

Initiatives to clean up our highways and parks, to curb the persistence of litter, have their place, but this gives us a bit of a jolt. Where best to focus our energies? We have limited lifespans, and the doomsayers predict we have very little time to solve pressing problems that could make living in the world we want to live in impossible. How will we spend our time? What to prioritize? (I also wish to discuss this topic of prioritization in an upcoming post.)

Many exhibits, photographs, books, poems, edicts, and other creative endeavors have derived from the very important concept, "There's no such thing as away." How important for us, in said overly consumptive society, to acknowledge how "away" only equates to "trash bags in trash cans that get dumped into larger garbage bins or dumpsters in garbage trucks that go to refugee camps for all the exiled trash bags, to commune with one another, die their slow deaths in the company of their trash bag companions, decompose together, layered over with the filler of more bags, soil, more bags, soil, then crushed, then filled in with more soil, and eventually something growing on that soil" -- Uy, how depressing landfill culture can feel!

But we can hardly consider our understanding, a raised consciousness (ah, the legacy of the sixties), enough. To reduce our feasible actions to the conscientiousness involved in extracting waste from our homes is quite the sad state of affairs, isn't it? And all that effort in contemplating purchasing a new item (the "Is it really worth it?" test)! It's much more difficult to stop our habituated selves from purchasing frivolous objects, with obscene amounts of packaging waste that doesn't often lend itself that well to any creative use or re-use, than it is to not have the objects available to purchase in the first place.

Streamlining. It can happen through legislation, but that's an intricate, unwieldy process. Who wants to waste the time, when one's intellectual capacities could go toward some other, more fulfilling use? It can also happen through materials design. Designers use intelligent design (Yes, ha ha. Good, good. It's one of my favorite things about the design professions, how much I get to use the words, "intelligent design," in an ironic way!), and suddenly, a billion worries extinguish in a single conscientious, carefully considered plan. And round and round we spin about this "best use of our efforts" challenge. What does the best use of your not-infinite life span look like?