Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - This may be the season for making merry but, unfortunately, the time from Hallowe’en until the sobering truths behind Martin Luther King Day has become more known as the season for generating an abundance of waste.
How much wrapping material and unconsumed edibles will be hauled away in our garbage?
Will Boxing Day returns find a forever home or only add to the heaps of garbage that form an increasingly dense collection of poisonous pimples on the face of our planet?
This extended period of crass consumerism boasts peaks of “buy, buy, buy” during the ever-extending Black Friday week and the twelve (or so ) days of Christmas.
Yes, there are festive get-togethers with friends and family. Yes, more than any other time of the year, charitable giving abounds. Yes, the joy and wonder in children’s eyes, echoed in those of the adults around them reliving the excitement of long ago parades and winter wonderlands and being the center of celebration, strikes musical chords in one’s heart.
But from the magnified demand for a multiple of too-often unneeded things to excessive packaging to the explosion of waste, the gift-giving season has deleterious consequences.
Such consumer demand may create jobs… but most are overseas in pitiable working conditions and require abusive uses of a finite amount of resources and incur incredible carbon costs shipping raw materials and finished goods hither and yon. All subsidized by equally limited tax dollars extracted from our government by the plutocrats who profit from the system.
Packaging has become a Russian nesting doll of plastics and other toxic materials.
Pushed by Big Oil and Big Gas – yup, those clean clear baggies are manufactured from viscous oil and fracked unnatural gas sucked from the ground – the amounts of plastics have exponentially increased even as the focus on pollution issues has expanded.
Getting consumers hooked on must-have stuff provides them with endless income. And when prices surge, they can pass costs along to their addicted customers and add another tithe to their products.
More and more is being made and since no plastic is truly biodegradable – they are just pulverized into the source microfibers that are now being found in everything from our water to milk to our bodies…
On top of all the energy and attendant environmental costs of extracting, refining and transporting oil, both the manufacture of plastic and its destruction take more power (from fossil fuels, of course) and release toxins inimical to humans and planet.
Approximately 500,000 microscopic fibers are released into wastewater every time a pair of polyester track pants are run through a household washing machine; too many carry toxic chemicals that easily evade scrubbers in sewage treatment facilities and escape into the environment.
More and more food items are needlessly wrapped in plastic, including fresh produce. Instead of protecting us, this increases the amounts of poisons seeping into our bodies and adds to the desecration of Mother Earth.
Most of the wrapping paper, ribbons, decorations, all those unwanted gifts as well as old items replaced by the new and shiny, and end up in the train of trash.
Americans waste about 25% more between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Considering we already generate about three times more trash than anyone else in the world, this is a crisis of epic proportions.
Reduce. Repair. Repurpose. Reuse. Recycle.
Let this become American’s new mantra.
To start with, be clear with retailers: stop with the plastic. bring your own washable and reusable bags, not only for the groceries at the check-out but also for produce and bulk goods.
Refuse to buy black plastic products especially those coming in contact with food that contain unacceptable levels of cancer-causing, hormone-disrupting chemicals.
Stick to silicone and wood and ask for a pass on those black plastic kitchen and take-out utensils, ones which too often contain recycled materials laced with toxic flame retardants.
Demand all products be safe; while the law requires disclosure of toxic chemicals in children’s products, the information remains very difficult for the public to access, and the process to bar such products is onerous and fought every step of the way by those with a finger in the financial pie.
Shop locally, both for the health and vitality of our communities and businesses, and to reduce transportation costs and environmental impact.
Avoid single-use anything – the world does not need more throwaways.
There’s a significant role for businesses, policymakers, and consumers to play.
Demand that companies at all points along the supply chain heading to your door do a better job of cutting down on packaging and plastic waste. To be a respected corporate citizen, they must take full responsibility for the waste they generate and harm they cause.
Since a huge amount of what items are contained in, including shipping boxes, layers of shrink-wrap, cardboard, the non-decomposable swaths of bubble wrap, Styrofoam and other fillers, often exceeding the size of the gift end up in landfills, compel the perpetrators to assume accountability.
If absolutely necessary, demand they use natural packaging material that can be reused or safely composted.
On the personal level, do you really need new strings of lights, synthetic garlands, lawn decorations, and disposable gifts containing plastic and can't be recycled?
Do you think that if enough people were to refuse to buy them, it would send a clear message up the distribution chain that people don’t want any more?
Can you turn your back on “fast fashion” that is cheap, too often is or contains synthetics, doesn’t even last long enough to be repurposed, and choose well made clothing that can become a classic?
When food waste goes to a landfill, it takes years to decompose and emits global warming and flammable methane gas. Heed the lead of communities mandating organic composting or do your own.
Places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army, senior homes and local charities often appreciate items you no longer need including board games, books, working computers, kitchen and office items. You can benefit from a tax write-off while helping people in your community.
Buy “vintage” and collectibles aka secondhand, or make homemade gifts.
Since kids of any age can't tell if ornaments are heirlooms, found stuff or handmade, skip the ultra-packaged glittery objects that won’t last the holiday and be creative.
My favorite clothes growing up were hand-me-downs from an older cousin. Budgets go further when spent on second hand toys and sports equipment and you save layers of packaging and transportation of new stuff.
How about gifts of experience like hockey tickets, a trip to that special destination, acting lessons, or vouchers like “four hours of babysitting” or “good for ten mowings of the lawn”?
Make your own traditions to be shared with family and friends and passed down through the generations.
Give a gift of your time to those who make your life brighter. Bake casseroles. Share a visit to your favorite mall or museum.
Find unique items at small businesses to support the local economy.
Make donations to local food banks or other charitable organizations in other people's names.
Most people would probably prefer not to waste time and money on more stuff. But they would embrace that old-time holiday feeling, of celebrating without the crazy consumerism that leads to debt and so much trash.
What foiled the Grinch who stole Christmas wasn’t authoritarian might-makes-right or high-priced corporate lawyers but the power of voices raised in song.
Let’s join in song and change our current wasteful habits because, without a healthy Earth – water, soil, air, flora, fauna – and mankind, we won’t have a future.
No matter where you reside on this Earth, let’s raise a post-Yule toast of increased goodwill towards our planetary starship.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
