Last night I finally finished reading Garbage Land. I’m normally a fast reader but this book had to be digested in small bites as I found myself moving in and out of anger, sadness, incomprehension, and dispair at an alarming speed. I had to slow it down to take it all in and think about how we got ourselves into such a mess and how the earth, as forgiving as she is, is going be a really bad place to be if we carry on producing, using, and dumping at this rate.

So…now I am really really aware of the problem of all this stuff produced and bought by a country of eager and insatiable consumers (me included…yeah I like new stuff as much as anyone else) and I want to do something, anything, to stop adding to the problem of excess. I want to be part of the solution not the problem…I can’t even contemplate the alternative.

So how about we start listing the small things we can all do to reduce our trash footprints?

• Become a locorvire and buy at the farmer’s markets. 
• Shop for locally produced goods in stores and surrounding communities. 
• Borrow books and movies from the libraries in town – we have so many to choose from (Champaign, Urbana Free, Parkland, Illinois).
• Give unwanted books to Books to Prisoners. 
• Buy from the member owned Common Ground Food Co-op and take your own bags and containers for bulk items. 
• Stop buying fast food and bottled water. Read Bottlemania.
• Cut down on packaged goods and embrace home cooking. 
• Remove excess packaging and leave it in the store! 
• Of the waste heirarchy focus on Reuse and Reduce.
• Want less. Need less. Desire less. Buy less.

What do you do?

 

Zero Waste, Recycling and Garbage Related Action

• Can an average person really create Zero Waste? Find out at The Rubbish Diet.
• Beyond Recycling challenges whether waste can ever be sustainable.
• Jon Rolls, Executive Director of ReZolve Kernow strives to make his household Zero Waste during Cornwall’s Zero Waste Week.
• Eco-Cycle, working to build Zero Waste communities.

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