Taking out the Trash

It was our first Saturday in Hamilton together since my return from Alaska, and we had intended on walking down to the Farmer’s Market with hopes of finding some fresh eggs to replace the ones now sizzling in the frying pan. While I set about burning breakfast, Brandi busied herself pulling played out pea plants from her garden and throwing them in the compost bin. She was only half done when I called her to come eat, so after Little Steve had his fill of pancakes we headed back outside to complete the task.

Our yard was in desperate need of some attention. It hadn’t seen much in the way of maintenance over the summer and had grown dry and dusty from constant dog frolics and indiscriminate watering schedules. Large quantities of husky down lay accumulated in every crack and crevice. As I could see it might be awhile before we’d be ready to leave, I grabbed a rake and began combing the ground.

I was still scratching at the hard pack and dead grass when Brandi finished her garden project, and her expression told me that a leisurely stroll through the Farmer’s Market had just been eclipsed by the more pressing needs of our own little plot. What better time to put in some work, we concluded, than Labor Day weekend?

Brandi had collected a large mound of pine needles and other debris when the snows had retreated last spring. It was slated for removal by our landlords, but months later remained heaped in a corner. After borrowing a wheelbarrow from one of Brandi’s co-workers, I scraped the ponderosa’s latest castings into several more piles, and we filled the pickup to capacity with woody detritus. Then we were off to the dump.

Admittedly, I had already given serious consideration to the roguish impulse that urged me to simply chuck the entire mess over a steep bank along one of the surrounding forest roads. It was all organic; with time, it would decompose. Bob had informed us that there would be a charge to dispose of it at the dump when he loaned us the wheelbarrow. I hated the idea of throwing away perfectly good money, but at least this way the worthless mess in our yard would one day be someone else’s pay dirt. Or so I thought.

We haven’t lived in the valley for long, barely a year, so it might just be a case of ignorance on my part. There may well be someplace here that processes organic material I have yet to discover. Still, I think the situation in the Bitterroot indicative of the general attitude toward refuse that prevails in this country. Our yard waste, I soon came to learn, would never realize its full potential as fertilizer. It wasn’t destined to become humus; it was nothing more than plain old rubbish.

I wasn’t aware at the time, but there is no landfill in Ravalli County. All waste generated in the Bitterroot Valley is taken to the transfer station in Victor for transport somewhere else. No effort is made to separate or categorically process the waste. My heart sunk as we were directed into a large steel building and told to empty the truckload of tree litter onto a concrete floor strewn with garbage.

A truck was parked on either side of us. One was filled with old broken furniture, the other household waste. The owners were busy dumping their loads upon the stained pad alongside ours. A small excavator stood ready to shovel the entire mess into a large compactor that oozed Styrofoam, broken glass, and kitchen litter. It smelled as if the entire building was rotting. We finished cleaning out the bed of the pickup, paid our fee, and drove away with the same thought bouncing around inside each of our heads.

“Would have been better off just dumping it in the woods.”

Although I sometimes postulate that a certain amount of organic detritus is in fact a necessary addition to a landfill if there is to be any hope for decomposition, I don’t see this tactic as being an effective waste stream management strategy. Gone are the days of perfunctorily plowing our waste out of sight, out of mind. Ravalli County in no way lacks open space; that it has no landfill only serves to underscore the gravity of the situation. Waste production has reached such a magnitude that nothing less than a comprehensive, systematic approach can possibly manage it.

Our breakfast nook is filled with recyclables. Paper, cardboard, glass, metal, plastic, are all arranged in neatly ordered stacks. There is little opportunity for the proper disposal of recyclables in Hamilton, so we haul them with us whenever we visit Washington. We have begun washing plastic baggies for reuse, and Brandi almost has me trained not to forget the fabric grocery bags when we leave for the store. Now that we have a compost bin, trips to the dumpster in the alley have decreased significantly. Even so, we need to do more.

Truth is our expectations, as a culture, are in need of a complete overhaul. Our entire attitude must evolve. We can no longer afford to pitch refuse haphazardly into landfills. We must resist our craving for disposability and lower our tolerance for garbage in America. Most importantly, we must come to grips with the fact that, since there truly are differences between pine needles and trash, there must be different ways with which to handle them.

Three R's and a Microbus

Hanging out with my brother Dagan is always entertaining. He is a boisterous character, and not above expressing his opinion, loudly. I hadn’t seen him since last July, but it just so happened that, while Brandi and I were driving to the Tri-Cities for her sister Alece’s wedding, he was making a pilgrimage north with his daughter Arianna and their buddy Stephen. Seizing the opportunity, I contacted Dag and made arrangements to rendezvous with him when he passed through Kennewick, WA.

My brother is passionate about machines, but he is truly devoted to that simplest of automobiles, the air-cooled Volkswagen. As a show of faith, he was making the 1000 mile trek from Petaluma, California, to Montana in his ’59 Type 2 camper conversion. Dagan had rescued the Transporter from a barn in Oregon years before and had restored it to a usable condition. It ran reliably, but as anyone familiar with classic Volkswagens will be quick to tell you, there is a reason why every VW owner can perform an engine swap on the side of the road.

When I hadn’t heard from him by the appointed time, I gave Dagan a call. Apparently attempting to cross the Central Oregon desert during the hottest part of the day was taking its toll on the camper. For the moment they were huddled in the shade of an overpass, my brother said, waiting for the Volkswagen’s motor to cool down.

If a VW is one thing, it is idiosyncratic. Facing one hundred degree heat, Dagan’s camper was floundering. Ambient air temperature in the Columbia River Basin was so high that the engine could no longer cool itself. Detonation was the result; the risk, a blown motor. Dagan, air-cooled aficionado that he is, knew better than to push the limits of his machine, even if he had brought along another entire engine, just in case.

After a short rest, the VW finally made Kennewick, and I met them in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant just off Highway 395. Dagan prattled on proudly about the Volkswagen for awhile before segueing into one of his familiar rants.

“What I can’t stand are the people who want to crush all the old cars and ship them to Japan to build hybrids.”

Though he might not appear so, my brother Dagan truly is an environmentalist. He may not buy into the latest trends in green consumer culture, but at least he understands there is a hierarchy to the three big R’s of environmental responsibility.

First, reduce consumption wherever possible. Second, reuse everything. Lastly, recycle whatever remains.

An obvious necessity, recycling will never be the answer. Certainly, recycling is a great method for keeping waste out of the landfill, but recycling a perfectly useful old car in order to manufacture a new one? As Dagan notes, this doesn't necessarily a green footprint make.

Considering each vehicle’s carbon footprint in its entirety, it is highly unlikely that crushing a Volkswagen to build a new Toyota Prius would have any less environmental impact than simply continuing to operate the VW itself. What it does do, however, is allow American consumer culture to persist unchecked, with a clean, green, conscious. Move over, V-Dub bus; a new flagship for the alternative lifestyle has arrived. Rather than buying into the hype, Dagan goes green by reusing existing parts to keep his old camper on the road.

As widespread and pervasive as humanity’s impact has become, there is no choice but to recycle, with even greater scope and diligence than ever before. Still, buying newly manufactured goods, even those made from recycled material, has to be relegated to the final option, after alternatives of reduction and reuse have already been explored and exhausted. Clearly, everything that can be must be recycled, and consumers should be rewarded for doing so. But a conservation effort focused on manufacture and consumption, even if it does revolve around recycled materials and green technology, is missing the point.

Reduce. Reuse. Then recycle.

Volkswagen owners are a tribal bunch. After spying Dagan’s camper in the parking lot, several members of the local VW club joined us with their own aging Type 2s. Their discussion was animated, as any conversation among enthusiasts tends to be, centered wholly on Volkswagens and their relationship with this emblematic automobile.

Following the impromptu gathering, I bid farewell to my brother and niece and drove back to Brandi’s parents’ place. The bridal party had assumed control of the house, so I occupied myself by helping her father John set a fence post and finalize some last minute wedding preparations.

The next day Alece and Brandon were married in a beautiful ceremony ministered by Brandi in a neighbor’s yard. A reception dinner followed at the McCoy’s home next door, complete with a diverse assortment of liquid refreshment and the associated mound of discarded cans and bottles.

The McCoy’s are ardent recyclers, and they had made every effort to maximize recycling at the reception. Separate receptacles had been placed beside each trash bin in hopes of capturing as many recyclables as possible. Good use was made of them at first, but as the revelry continued on into the night, more trash and fewer recyclables found its way into the recycling containers.

When I wandered out onto the patio the next morning, I found Brandi up to her elbows in a large black plastic bag. She was happily digging plastic bottles and aluminum cans out of the trash. Shooting her a dubious look, I set to work myself, collecting frosting smeared beer bottles from the garbage and tossing them into a pile.

Knowing we can’t do everything, we must do what we can.

Hypocrisy Reigns

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m a hypocrite. Certainly, the best thing I could do for the environment is drive my shiny Chevy pickup off a cliff. Am I going to do that? Of course not, at least not as a favor to the environment. Maybe because I am too busy fiddling with my iPod (one luxury I don’t have) or updating this blog from my web enabled cell phone (another item I haven’t procured … yet), but not to save the rainforest or anything nearly as noble as that.

To be quite plain, unless we are all going to live in skin tents or grass huts like aborigines there is no lifestyle choice that isn’t going to selfishly degrade the environment. I know that, and I’m not going to try and pretend that I don’t. But this is a blog, and it just wouldn’t seem right if I didn’t editorialize at least a tiny little bit. And, hey, if someone wants to bring back the buffalo and let folks chase them around with a bow and arrow, I’ll be the first to sign up. But I know it wouldn’t change anything if I did, unless everyone else did it as well. We all know that’s not going to happen, so I’ll try to remain realistic.

Of all the things I would like to say on the subject, the most important, I believe, is that we are never going to be able to buy our way out of any predicament. There is nothing new under the sun, and a lot of fine people before me have already addressed the issue of a growing human presence and the extensive environmental degradation associated with it. Somewhere in there, some bright individual came up with the perfect solution to the problem, if you’re willing to accept that there even is one.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The thing I always find is that most of us fail to realize that those words are placed in order of importance. I see a lot of “green” interest in recycling projects. Well, that’s a good thing to do, I suppose, if you’re not willing to start at the beginning. Maybe you’re easing into it; I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that the first word, reduce, describes the action that is going to produce the biggest results.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve definitely gotten lazier. My willingness to reduce has certainly tended to subside. I have more possessions, more detritus. I’m better with the second two, but reduction has become less of a priority. Perhaps I’m losing my idealism, but I hope not.

And maybe that’s not as true as I think. In some facets of my life, I have reduced, significantly. When I’m hungry, I don’t just buy a meal off the shelf. I’m buying whole foods and making things from scratch more often. I’m happy with simpler things, like a board game or a good book. The habit of driving around in circles looking for something to do has certainly curtailed since my youth.

Still, I have more. A computer, the internet, a gas swilling V8 powered pickup truck. Does this make me a bad person? Probably. Am I able to change it completely today? Don’t I wish. For all my hypocrisy, I will tell you this though, with perfect honesty. My vision of an ideal existence is barely getting by on the merits of a piece of land and my own hard work. Right now, I just don’t have the money to get my start. But if someone pointed out a homestead to me and said “Everything you need to survive is right here on this farm. If you never ask for one more thing you can have it” then I would do just that.

So if any of that piques your interest, check back. For now, Brandi and I are taking our skis up to the pass and letting the dogs run.