Revisiting "Common Sense..." (4 of 5)

The 3 R's

My wife and I incorporate the 3 R’s into our daily lives not only because it is a great way to green our world, reduce America’s dependence on oil, and save a few bucks at the same time, but because we want to be good role models for our little girl. I’ll share with you a few of our examples.

The first R is reduce, of course; reduce the amount of waste we generate. It’s completely dumbfounding how much packaging goes into products. Couldn’t we all do without a little more cardboard and plastic wrap in America’s landfills? To do our part to reduce this problem, my family buys in bulk when possible. An example I mentioned in the original post, is purchasing blocks of cheese instead of the prepackaged individual sliced or grated cheese. It sounds like a stupid, nit-picky thing, but it is as fundamentally sound and simple as Obama suggesting Americans properly inflate their automobile tires. The little things do add up. Cheese does not go bad overnight and I don’t feel the need to pay a couple of extra dimes to save myself from a grated knuckle. I keep a supply of band-aides on hand.

Another example, we don’t purchase bottled water. The United States has some of the safest, cleanest drinking water in the world. What a colossal waste of resources needed to make plastic bottles from petroleum, fill them with water, and then ship them cross country so that someone can drink ice cold Vermont tap water in California.

Ideally, I would like to see Americans take it to the next level. First, stop purchasing bottled water. Then, all sports drinks, juices, etc., anything that can be sold as a powder or concentrate should be purchased in that form in order to save the energy necessary to ship the hydrated product. It takes little effort on our part to supply a container and add water to reconstitute a sports drink if it means saving energy in shipping and wasted packaging.

The second R is reuse. Those plastic bottles I mentioned... well, our family is not perfect. When we are away from home for a long weekend at a tournament we may purchase a sports drink from the concession stand. While this is an example of sending vendors the incorrect message of how we want their product packaged, we do save face and a shred of dignity by reusing the bottle. That bottle becomes our water bottle for future games or hikes. Nalgene water bottles and aluminum canisters have become trendy in the light of wasteful disposable water containers. They are good secondary option, but as I still have plenty of used bottles floating around the house, I think we’ll just reuse the plastic.

Another example of reuse: in the spring of this year we invested in reusable grocery bags (a whole dollar!) that we take with us every time we go to the store. To amplify the energy savings we walk and take numerous small trips to the store every week. This saves a couple quarters at the pump, burns a few calories, gets us out of the house, and prepares the little girl for her afternoon nap.

The third R is recycling. We do accumulate plastic bags despite the fact we went to reusable bags. So, we hang on to them and put them in a recycling bin at the local Safeway. But we don't stop with plastic bags, we also save newspapers, magazines, steel cans, aluminum, and plastic jugs. The only major waste product that we do not recycle is glass. It’s disappointing, but there is no place in Ravalli County that will accept glass, steel cans, or plastic jugs. There is also no curbside pickup. In response to this, we store steel, aluminum, and plastic and make an annual drive to Missoula to recycle. The amount of money we receive for trading in our aluminum cans at Pacific Recycling pays for the trip.

Having shared these few examples with you, I must admit that we are not perfect in our practice of the 3 R’s. We do not buy all products with the least amount of packaging available. We will buy a sport drink on occasion and we like the microbrews which happen to come in glass bottles. But the point, like all of my suggestions, is that we try. We actively try to incorporate reduce, reuse, and recycle, despite inconveniences. That is the least of what is asked of anyone, that we just try to do our part to make our space in this world a little better.

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