One of my favorite books as a kid was "50 Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth". I didn't really understand at the time, but it truly shaped my perception of recycling. It started out simply: aluminum cans, plastic bottles - both easily identifiable, plentiful considering that our family drank a fair amount of soda, and recycling centers gave out money for them. But I noticed that the centers had bins for newspaper, tubs for tin cans, and several bins for glass. Even if they didn't pay much for them, or even at all, I started to wonder at the waste that could be averted with some careful sorting.
The word "green" wasn't really in use until I was well into high school. Our school - like many newer facilities at the time - was outfitted with receptacles for recycling, particularly bottles and cans. Though my friends sometimes scoffed (or were even just grossed out), I would remove soda cans from the trash and place them in the recycling bin. I realized that, sure, one can might not make a huge difference... but if I saved one extra can a day, that was 364 cans a year. Even one a week was another 52 cans that didn't end up in a landfill. That meant a lot more to me than most people.
See, my parents worked for the Forest Service in their youth. They would maintain trails, repair signs, and clean out fire pits. Sometimes campers left trash everywhere. Even as campers ourselves, sometimes we would find old cans sticking out of the dusty ground, where we could easily step on it and cut ourselves. It was an eyesore, a hazard, and it was certainly no good for the environment. Nothing breaks up the beauty of a sunrise by the South Fork of the Stanislaus River like a floating beer can that some careless fisherman tossed aside. So litter was a personal thing to me, on top of knowing that cleaning up after myself was the proper thing to do. And being fond of the wild places, wanting to preserve them, I knew recycling what we already have in use was the best way to keep the wild places pristine: turning in as much recyclable material as possible meant less waste in landfills, meaning they filled up more slowly, meaning they needed less space and less frequently. It also meant that fewer mines and refineries would be required to acquire new material. There was no drawback. It was logically the correct thing to do.
The only issue is one of effort. Sadly, a number of people find it to simply be too much hassle to separate bottles of glass, take it all down to a recycling center, and wait for someone to parse through everything. The time commitment and effort to maintain a recycling habit is often enough to make some people simply throw out their recyclables. That became even easier as the trend caught on, however, and by the time I was in college many dining facilities, bus stops, and public parks were outfitted with recycling receptacles. For the home-residents, garbage pickup services started offering at-home recycling pickup. Sure, you didn't get paid for it, but it almost eliminated the effort required.
Every time a new method was introduced, I incorporated it into my personal habits. Now I set aside recyclables at home, everything from newspaper to regular batteries; at the office, I help maintain the receptacles by keeping them clean and tidy, and emptying them as appropriate into the outside collections; when I go out on a hike or on a road trip, I make sure to pack out all my trash, and have a separate bag to collect things we can recycle when we get home. I try to help the practice gather momentum as well by educating kids on what can be recycled (my niece was ecstatic when I told her that she could recycle batteries), I encourage my peers to start up the practice, and I also set a positive example by being consistent.
I hope that I will eventually be able to whittle down how much I actually have to throw away to nothing. These days I'm even composting organic materials, so there's even less waste going into the garbage can every week. As time goes by, more and more efficient methods of manufacturing produce less waste, and our methods of reusing material become even more diverse. It is my fervent hope that we will eventually be able to completely self-sustain as a species, and no longer find it necessary to acquire more resources in order to maintain our lifestyles.
March 05, 2012
March 01, 2012
Brain Dead Drivel
(WARNING: Contains Strong Language)
Recently I found myself gainfully employed.
Now, unlike most other jobs I have possessed, this one is neither full-time, nor is it during normal business hours. No, the job I was hired to do is seasonal work that will end right about the time Spring Quarter starts up, which is pretty well perfect. It doesn't pay much, in fact hardly anything at all, but it slows the speed with which I am draining my unemployment claim. It's something, and I'm learning to take what I can with both hands and throttle it until I've wrung every last drop of sustenance from it.
In times gone by, I would have scoffed. I'm earning almost half what I used to, and the hours are well after sunset until just past dawn. It's rough work, with harsh cleansers and sharp things and hard heavy objects with pointy corners. I'm on my feet pretty much the whole time. And everyone there with me is in the same boat, so I don't dare complain. I suck it up, because it's what you fucking do. It doesn't matter what it looks like anymore. It doesn't matter what other people think. It matters that I grab ahold of what life gives me and I never let go, like a terrier will get a rat between its teeth and shake the life out of it. I can't be the prim and proper middle-class lady I used to be. It's time to nut up or shut up, get my hands dirty, and wade through mold and dust and garbage and cardboard (and occasionally bite my lip through the sting of the cleanser when it hits the cuts on my hands) to get the job bloody well done.
I wake tired every time, and with each consecutive shift things seem a little harder. It's harder to get out of bed, harder to rouse into consciousness, harder to stay awake, harder to figure out if I'm hungry. It's harder to fall asleep when I get home, harder to see the goal ahead. But dimly I remember it's there, and I keep getting my ass out of bed, into the shower, into clean clothes, into the car, and down to the store. I think they call it graveyard shift because you feel like a zombie after a while. But I'm embracing it - good, bad, and ugly - with all my might. Others have come before me and done harder work for less. I won't let this beat me down. I just fucking won't. There's too much fire in my heart and too much stubbornness in my mind to let any paltry thing like this own me. I could be jobless, but I'm not. It's kind of a crap job, but it's fucking work, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be ashamed of that for any reason.
I worry a lot. Will there be room in the class I need, will I find more work when this is done, will I find ENOUGH work, can I find a place of my own that I can actually afford, can I make it on my own. The answer to that last one is no, at least for now. There's no way in hell that I could completely support myself in this moment. It's a bare, naked, raw truth, and hiding it doesn't make it less real. I'm done hiding the truth. It wasted a lot of damn time and gained little in return. Smiling and pretending things are all right only makes the wound fester. I need to lance it, let it drain, expose it to the air. I need the sunlight to hit it and fire to cauterize it. This is the truth. This is what's real. I'm fucking poor, can't support myself, but goddamnit I'm working like an honest citizen and paying my bills one at a time.
And that, above all else, makes me proud.
If you asked me what I need to do for school in this moment, the words that would come out of my mouth would be in half-formed sentences that cobbled together in incomplete thoughts. My brain is so tired I can't think straight. But where my brain fails, my spirit picks up the slack, and I carry that spark like a torch. It's my last inch, that last ray of hope. It's that fundamental core of myself that cannot and WILL not be extinguished for as long as I have the courage to keep fighting, the will to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and make something of the day. I may be in a rough spot, sure. Lots of people have been. This isn't new. I'm not special. In fact, a lot of folks have it much, MUCH worse. And yeah, I'm daring to forge ahead and get back into school, AND work, AND dig myself out of debt, AND many other things. But I choose to do them. I am no victim of circumstance. This fate was of my own making, and by god it will be of my own making to get myself out. Will I have to lean on others to make it happen? Yes. Am I grateful? More than I can express. But this is something I have to do for myself. I have to climb this mountain so that when I get to the top, I know for a fucking fact that it was because I bent my will to it and had the strength to persevere.
So yeah. I may be snappish, or short, or groggy. I may be exhausted, weary, and broke. It's an unglamourous life. But it's real, and it's mine, and nobody is going to take that from me.
Recently I found myself gainfully employed.
Now, unlike most other jobs I have possessed, this one is neither full-time, nor is it during normal business hours. No, the job I was hired to do is seasonal work that will end right about the time Spring Quarter starts up, which is pretty well perfect. It doesn't pay much, in fact hardly anything at all, but it slows the speed with which I am draining my unemployment claim. It's something, and I'm learning to take what I can with both hands and throttle it until I've wrung every last drop of sustenance from it.
In times gone by, I would have scoffed. I'm earning almost half what I used to, and the hours are well after sunset until just past dawn. It's rough work, with harsh cleansers and sharp things and hard heavy objects with pointy corners. I'm on my feet pretty much the whole time. And everyone there with me is in the same boat, so I don't dare complain. I suck it up, because it's what you fucking do. It doesn't matter what it looks like anymore. It doesn't matter what other people think. It matters that I grab ahold of what life gives me and I never let go, like a terrier will get a rat between its teeth and shake the life out of it. I can't be the prim and proper middle-class lady I used to be. It's time to nut up or shut up, get my hands dirty, and wade through mold and dust and garbage and cardboard (and occasionally bite my lip through the sting of the cleanser when it hits the cuts on my hands) to get the job bloody well done.
I wake tired every time, and with each consecutive shift things seem a little harder. It's harder to get out of bed, harder to rouse into consciousness, harder to stay awake, harder to figure out if I'm hungry. It's harder to fall asleep when I get home, harder to see the goal ahead. But dimly I remember it's there, and I keep getting my ass out of bed, into the shower, into clean clothes, into the car, and down to the store. I think they call it graveyard shift because you feel like a zombie after a while. But I'm embracing it - good, bad, and ugly - with all my might. Others have come before me and done harder work for less. I won't let this beat me down. I just fucking won't. There's too much fire in my heart and too much stubbornness in my mind to let any paltry thing like this own me. I could be jobless, but I'm not. It's kind of a crap job, but it's fucking work, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be ashamed of that for any reason.
I worry a lot. Will there be room in the class I need, will I find more work when this is done, will I find ENOUGH work, can I find a place of my own that I can actually afford, can I make it on my own. The answer to that last one is no, at least for now. There's no way in hell that I could completely support myself in this moment. It's a bare, naked, raw truth, and hiding it doesn't make it less real. I'm done hiding the truth. It wasted a lot of damn time and gained little in return. Smiling and pretending things are all right only makes the wound fester. I need to lance it, let it drain, expose it to the air. I need the sunlight to hit it and fire to cauterize it. This is the truth. This is what's real. I'm fucking poor, can't support myself, but goddamnit I'm working like an honest citizen and paying my bills one at a time.
And that, above all else, makes me proud.
If you asked me what I need to do for school in this moment, the words that would come out of my mouth would be in half-formed sentences that cobbled together in incomplete thoughts. My brain is so tired I can't think straight. But where my brain fails, my spirit picks up the slack, and I carry that spark like a torch. It's my last inch, that last ray of hope. It's that fundamental core of myself that cannot and WILL not be extinguished for as long as I have the courage to keep fighting, the will to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and make something of the day. I may be in a rough spot, sure. Lots of people have been. This isn't new. I'm not special. In fact, a lot of folks have it much, MUCH worse. And yeah, I'm daring to forge ahead and get back into school, AND work, AND dig myself out of debt, AND many other things. But I choose to do them. I am no victim of circumstance. This fate was of my own making, and by god it will be of my own making to get myself out. Will I have to lean on others to make it happen? Yes. Am I grateful? More than I can express. But this is something I have to do for myself. I have to climb this mountain so that when I get to the top, I know for a fucking fact that it was because I bent my will to it and had the strength to persevere.
So yeah. I may be snappish, or short, or groggy. I may be exhausted, weary, and broke. It's an unglamourous life. But it's real, and it's mine, and nobody is going to take that from me.
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