Resolve to reduce, reuse in 2024

#MiddleburyCT #Reduce #Reuse

This hand soap eliminates plastic packaging. You add the water, so it also reduces the transportation footprint because liquids cost more to ship. Laundry detergent also is available this way. (Janine Sullivan-Wiley photo)

By JANINE SULLIVAN-WILEY

January is a favorite month for making positive changes. How about trying to improve your environmental impact? Pretty much everyone has gotten good at recycling, but of the triad “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” the first two parts are even better. This is old wisdom captured in the Depression Era saying, “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.”

“Reduce” most simply means using less of our planet’s resources. Use less energy, buy less stuff. Ouch! This one runs up hard against convenience and prosperity. It means not buying in the first place, and keeping and fixing what we already have.

Fixing a broken anything can be inconvenient and can be as or even more expensive than just getting a new one. But if the old one goes into a landfill, that is itself a great expense. Not buying something in the first place means asking ourselves, “Do I actually need it, or do I just want it?” The advertising industry is wildly good at cultivating our desire for things we might not have known existed … and didn’t “need” until they convinced us we did.

Then there’s “Fast Fashion,” where clothes are designed to be kept only a short time either due to how they’re made or a style that will scream “outdated!” very soon. That leads to great textile waste. It can be hard to choose differently and to keep our clothes rather than constantly buying new, but that’s reducing.

“Reuse” means replacing single-use items with multi-use ones, using reusable shopping bags, water and coffee bottles, cloth napkins and towels rather than paper ones, and using real plates, cups and silverware rather than plastic. Re-using our own containers for purchased coffee or food can be challenging (as in when a coffee shop pours the beverage into a paper cup before decanting it into yours), so consider making it at home. That includes coffee and also snacks and meals for us and our kids, packed in our own re-usable containers.

Before you recycle or throw away something, figure out if there is a way to reuse or repurpose it. For example, a plastic tray from food-to-go can become a drip tray for plants or a container for starting seeds.

Within a family, or among friends the old strategy of “hand-me-downs” is a clear way to reuse many things. There are entire websites devoted to the “reuse” concept – Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing (Middlebury is part of a great Buy Nothing Facebook group). Freecycle is another, as are threadUP, Mercari, and Poshmark. Some – the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores – enable you to support “reuse” while helping others. For all of these, consider shopping there as well as donating/selling there. Not buying new equals reducing.

Composting is a kind of “reuse.” There is just no reason to throw food scraps in the trash. When I compost food that we can’t eat, I think “We’ll eat it next year!” after it has become part of the garden soil.

If you can’t have (or don’t want) your own compost bin, since July 2023 our town has a pilot food composting program for transfer station users that is going really well. It’s easy: use any container at home to collect food scraps. When you have enough (your call) put them in one of the green bags you get at the transfer station and deposit them in the specially marked little green dumpster.

It adds up. Middlebury Director of Public Works Dan Norton said since the program started just six months ago, the town has collected just shy of 15.9 tons of food scraps. These are sent to Quantum Biopower, which uses the food waste to make renewable energy, nutrient rich fertilizer and mulch products, all while saving the town $1,888 that would have been spent disposing of them as regular trash. That’s a reduce-reuse-recycle win-win-win!

For all of this, each of us has to make a choice. It doesn’t have to be a complete revolution in how we live; any movement in the right direction will help. A deferred purchase here, a repaired item there, composted coffee grounds, even small acts help us give our children a better planet one step at a time.

Contact this writer at jswspotlight@gmail.com. You can visit the Middlebury Land Trust on Facebook or the website at middleburylandtrust.org. Meanwhile, happy hiking!