“We are living in a material world,” sang Madonna in 1985, and unlike the hair, makeup and clothing she wore while doing it, the message is not yet outdated.
More than two decades later, our world is no less – and probably even more – commodity-focused.
This mentality is not just a recent development in our history. Even the 19th century idea of Manifest Destiny was about acquiring more (and, what’s worse, our inherent right to acquire it).
It’s a little more recent – I’ll set it in the 1950s – that materialism took a serious turn into disposability.
Think McDonalds, with chipboard fry containers and hamburger patties shipped to restaurants via cardboard boxes.
The use of plastic became more widespread, and people apparently saw it as a material to be thrown away after only one use.
For our forebears living in an “affluent society,” it was about convenience.
Along with suburbia and a love for cars that are much bigger than necessary, they’ve passed this trait down the line to us.
We, however, have some information that past generations have not had. We (some of us, at least) recognize the negative environmental impact of living a disposable lifestyle.
We see that single-use products use landfill space and natural resources that are valuable and limited. Increasingly, we as a people are embracing a “solution” to this problem: recycling.
It’s still far from universal, but recycling has become pretty popular since Madonna first sang about materialism.
I’m glad people want to increase the good we get from our raw materials and decrease the energy that goes into products’ creation.
I’m a fan of recycling, so I never thought I’d say this, but here it is: Recycling is really starting to get on my nerves.
Recycling, instead of throwing things away, may seem like a 180-degree turnaround – a rejection of our seemingly genetic predisposition for doing what is convenient.
I’m starting to see recycling, though, as simply an extension of this attitude.
Of the three alternatives presented to us by the Environmental Protection Agency – reduce, reuse and recycle – recycling is by far the easiest.
This is because recycling is actually disposal.
It may be better than disposal in a landfill, but it is disposal nonetheless.
We have not overcome our desire for convenience nor are we making our society a much less disposable one. We are simply redirecting our trash.
Recycling, people may fail to remember, is a production process, too.
It takes energy and the natural resources from which we get the energy.
The process uses water and pollutes the air.
Getting products to the recycling plant and back takes trucks, which burn gas, which is obviously not helping the earth very much.
The energy required for recycling is, in most cases, offset by the energy saved. Reducing consumption or reusing materials instead of recycling them eliminates this energy usage completely.
For example, putting a plastic bag in the bag recycling box at Dillons will turn your sacks into a new plastic bag. (Actually, probably only one quarter or so of a bag, since they are seldom made from 100 percent recycled material.)
Taking that bag back to the store to hold new groceries (you’ve already carried it back to recycle it) gives it a second life without having to put it through the recycling process.
Many things that are intended for single use actually can be reused many times before they’re worn out.
Even better than reuse, of course, is reduction. Having one’s own cloth grocery bags or a water bottle that can be refilled indefinitely saves even more in energy and resource use.
Of course, we cannot cut consumption completely nor can everything be easily reused.
Recycling, then, is still an acceptable part of the waste reduction triangle.
I am afraid, however, that putting as big an emphasis on recycling as we are starting to do will de-emphasize the other (better) solutions to our disposal and consumption problem.
It may create in us a sense that we are doing our part to help the Earth when in reality there is much more to be done.