The real conservatives

E: The Environmental Magazine, August, 1995 by Jim Motavalli

Everybody on Earth is guilty of fouling the environment to some extent -- to be alive, after all, is to be a polluter -- but some of us are much worse offenders than others. And what's true for individuals is true for countries. The African nation of Togo, for instance, has 3,500 cars, one for every 200 people. The U.S. has 137 million cars, 35 percent of the world's total, or one for every two residents, including people too young to drive.

We here in the U.S. lead the world in fossil fuel pollution, acid rain generation, production of industrial waste and energy consumption. The U.S. creates 19 percent of the world's garbage -- compared to 4.4 percent for Japan, 1.1 percent for Australia, and 2.9 percent for West Germany. The U.S. is among the elite 20 percent of the world's population that takes in 82.7 percent of global income. The fortunate few also consume 10 times as much energy and one-and-a-half times more food than people in the developing world.

There were, at last count, over 250 million Americans, and we've created the biggest throwaway culture the world has ever known, with close to 200 million tons of municipal solid waste generated every year -- three-and-a-half pounds per person, per day. An incredible 30 percent of the garbage rapidly filling up our 5,800 landfills is packaging. We're chucking out 10 to 20 billion disposable diapers, two billion razors, 1.7 billion pens and 45 billion pounds of plastic every year. Indeed, our plastic waste disposal problem has gotten so serious that we're now exporting 200 million pounds of it every year -- mostly to Asia, where it merely gets landfilled there instead of here.

If there's a bright spot in all this gloom, it's that we still retain a solid -- though evolving -- "reuse" industry. David Goldebeck, in his new book, Choose to Reuse (Ceres Press), describes reuse as "making a worn-out product new again, as in retreading a tire." There's also what he calls secondary reuse, in which "the tire is used for something else, like helping to form an artificial reef, or ground up and used in surfacing roads."

Unfortunately, the traditional reuse business is being put on life support just as environmentalists are recognizing its significance. It's unlikely that Greenpeace is going to start a campaign to save the jobs of cobblers and Maytag repairmen, but environmental groups are beginning to encourage the growth of small and innovative reuse industries. One such, The Tutwiler Quilting Project, was launched in the Mississippi Delta in 1988 as a way for women to make money for themselves and their families. Using largely donated textile scraps, about 40 local quilters earn their livelihood sewing blankets, wall hangings, handbags, potholders, table runners and placemats. They're making money and conserving resources at the same time.

And the reuse message is getting Through to people. According to Michael Lewis, a senior research engineer at the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Washington, "A new type of reuse organization is emerging to take the place of traditional fix-it shops. We had reuse in the past and now we're getting back to it." Lewis cites extensive returnable bottle programs, as well as nonprofit groups around the country that acquire unwanted office goods or appliances and pass them on to low-income organizations. The Institute is preparing a book on just this kind of reuse (see sidebar).

Reusers don't necessarily identify themselves that way. Joe of Joe's Fix-It Shop often just does what he does, taking quiet pride in returning a worn or broken widget to service. Their crafts vary widely, but they share a commitment to reducing the waste stream and smokestack pollution, and saving on landfill space and raw materials. If these people constitute a movement, it's a threatened one. Many of those E interviewed say their work is increasingly embattled by cheap imported goods -- which make fixing something broken more expensive than buying it new -- and disposable designs that don't even allow some new products to be taken apart, let alone repaired.

Back Into Service

"It's becoming a throwaway world,"says Dan McMillion, who runs Dan's Volvo Service in Tampa, Florida. "I see big billboards advertising contact lenses that you use for just a day or two and then throw away." McMillion's parents raised him better. He likes to take broken-down Volvos and make them ready for service again. "I've probably done ground-up restorations on 20 or 30 cars," he says. "If we restore them, it keeps them out of the ground for a while." The problem, McMillion says, is that the sturdy 122S and 544 Volvos he favors "aren't worth tremendous amounts restored. You end up with more time into it than the car is worth."

In much the same way, Tom Migliaccio of Beacon Electronics in Westport, Connecticut, admits that the ancient Philco and RCA tube radios he fixes amid the nostalgic clutter of his repair shop are a labor of love. "I don't make any money on fixing them," he says. "But I like the idea that they'll be around after I am."