La Carreta News
Introduction
Ideas have their own shape. I want to feel their shape as a way of observing them. It is another language that is conveyed by the idea -- another way to ponder and understand something new.
Although I have recycled at the farm, such as composting and using fruit produce in multiple ways, I never stopped what I was doing to examine the source of many things that go through my life; what it is, how I use it and what happens to it. I am trying to create new directions in my life and on the farm--clear the canvas so to speak and start anew.
I didn't realize how great an impact recycling is. I have come to appreciate its great importance through my personal research. Recycling can help humanity make swift, critical changes necessary for restoring healthy environmental balance in order to establish a sincere, loving rapport with earth.
When Your Life is Trash: Recycle in Beauty (Re-entering the Cycle of Nature) is a multi-shaped, non-linear work. Ideas come out in spurts, bursts, short phrases, lists and stories. A varied multiplicity is showing itself this way because the issues are like a giant, moving puzzle that fits together the way it wants to; vast, multi-planed, and seemingly unrelated in a linear fashion, but related when allowed to appear as a gestalt.
My writing experience on this subject tells me, "This is only the tip of the iceberg on the recycling issue--that’s all you’ve seen." As I keep editing in efforts to finish--new ideas keep popping up. I don’t want to stop this--but I might not be able to accommodate all these flashes of inspiration. It just means the exploration has only begun and there’s no end in sight.
*Part I and Part II (Recycling Field Notes) are one article divided in two sections for easier reading. You may copy this article or parts of this article under condition of not changing or altering the information, and acknowledging the title of the article and the author.
Sylvia Ernestina Vergara
When Your Life is Trash: Recycle in Beauty
(Re-entering the Cycle of Nature)
Part I
By
Sylvia Ernestina Vergara
2008
I had worked hard to organize my paper, glass bottles and cardboard to take to the recycling bins which are at a garbage disposal site in Río Arriba. I was greeted by the manager who felt that recycling would not last too long there because people were abusing the large recycle containers by putting trash in them. He had no help and I unfortunately had to dump the cardboard in the trash area because it was not "just right for handling." I told him how sorry I would be if we lost this opportunity to recycle. In his tired voice he responded, "It’s all the same to me."
Well, I started to think how awful it must be to work at the dump. It was a depressing place seeing piles of tires, trash and what should be recycled ending in disaster--the death of a good idea. I started to think of how this tiresome, unpleasant experience had to be different. No wonder so many people in the U.S. still find recycling a very inconvenient obligation--a one more task to be done when there is so much to do already--let’s just throw it away.
My mind started to turn some different wheels. I began to imagine recycling on the same par as going to an exciting place or experiencing a fantastic concert. It needed to be a place that I would look forward to going to all week long. That’s what it needs to become!
First of all, recycling needs to disassociate itself from "trash." Trash is ugly! What if recycling associated itself with beauty, rejuvenation, transformation, inspiration, creativity and art?
I let my imagination go--I start to envision a think tank of creative persons coming together to design something that is not only practical, but very, very beautiful--a recycling center that is a superb public building created by foremost architects (Ahh! Of course us local wonder workers!)--a building made entirely of earth or recycled materials or both.
This recycling center is doing recycling "on site." People come and actually see "transformation" take place. This recycling complex is complete with space for live concerts, space for viewing documentaries and films concerning recycling and sustainability, global warming issues, library with books and materials about recycling and related issues, and space for selling recycled items. There is a location for recycled papers for printing books, office use and multiple needs. People are busy buying organic foods at the recycle center organic grocery store where every item is non-toxic and made to be biodegradable, recyclable including the packaging. An organic slow foods restaurant serves sandwiches to bicyclists, recycle patrons, walkers, local visitors and tourists. There's space for a state of the art work out gym. People are busy exercising on treadmills, stationary bikes and other moving-part exercise equipment that are producing energy that helps to run the center. The recycle center is acoustic friendly. Musicians making music on guitars, violins, flutes, percussion instruments--pianists playing on grand pianos. The acoustics carry down the large corridor that is graced with hanging long vines. Beautiful water fountains recycle water and create systems of balance and beauty. The structure uses natural light not only for solar gain, but to create visually stunning patterns of interplaying light and shadow that are a part of the interior design of the space. The recycling complex is a place of exquisite beauty and at the same a place that meets practical day-to-day needs.
Various forms of experimental energy production are happening at the recycling center (wind, solar and other). More experiments include water harvesting. Another project involves research with cottonwood trees using a single, small, sylvan sensor that can pick up solar energy from the leaves without robbing the tree of its nutrients and vitality. The sensor then "mirrors" the energy, compresses it and stores it in a miniature device. This includes wind energy when the branches and leaves move and gravitational energy derived from tree roots as they pull water and nutrients into the basic part of the tree. Nature seems to say, "Freeing imagination greatly expands the approach to problem solving. Nothing is impossible when the door of imagination is kept open."
Cloth is recycled. Glass and metal are made into new objects. People who are food processing are buying recycled and coded* glass bottles produced at the recycling center.
*Specific bottles that are already used by food processors are coded for reuse rather than remade into other glass objects. In-state coding of bottles at the recycling center decreases the need to import glass for local food processors.
Water and air monitoring are taught. The recycling center is a site for water monitoring of the river. A citizen's water and air monitoring website is on a large screen in the environmental monitoring gallery as it updates from minute to minute twenty four hours a day so that persons can be informed of the quality of the air and water in their communities, upstream and downstream as well.
The recycling center buildings, air and objects are also monitored to insure that none of the resources for recycling have been previously contaminated. This is very important because New Mexico has a significant nuclear industry. Special care must be taken to make sure that items like clothing, metals, large storage containers and other items are not contaminated. Contaminated items, poisons and toxins and anything that cannot be recycled are not accepted at this recycle center. Only resources that are sound, contamination-free and clean are accepted. By using the monitor approach, the site remains a safe and healthy place for the public as well as the center's employees.
What happens to toxic wastes? A shift away from purchasing toxic materials by consumers begins to occur as more and more people use the recycling center. With an increase in consumer education about the dangers of toxic materials; hazardous substances are gradually replaced with safe substitute materials.
In the lecture hall, on-going presentations of the latest sustainable energy inventions are happening. In the Recycling Center Workshop people of all ages are learning the art of how to fix things. Teenagers are busy working in the Inventions Center experimenting with and researching innovative environmentally friendly forms of transportation and solving sustainable energy problems. There are interesting and exciting jobs for teenagers at the Recycling Center. There's enthusiasm, hope and many positive opportunities in which people of all ages are directing their destinies in positive life-affirming directions.
The recycling center has a membership of $12 a year. To obtain a membership people take an introductory two-hour seminar that covers all features and benefits of the recycle center; how to prepare materials for recycling and recycling rules in order to maintain a membership in good standing. The recycling center seeks to serve its members by creating a process and transformation experience that profoundly enlightens and helps them reconnect to life in a positive way.
What would give people great satisfaction? So great, in fact, that they would be anxious to change lifelong habits of thoughtlessly throwing away? What would create the great cultural shift of society away from blatant, wasteful consumption? I believe it is in experiencing the birth of beauty. This is where we re-integrate nature's cycles of life, death and process into our lives. It is when we find peace in the "experience of life" rather than in objects intended to take the place of valuable life experiences. Our homes and lives fill with love and beauty that transcends the state of objects. We need to move from an object-obsessed society to one of "dance!" Not only do we dance, but we recognize the movement of life all around us as a beautiful ongoing dance that we are a part of in every way.
Nature does not leave us out of its experience. It is the opposite. We leave nature out of our lives. This is when life becomes "trash." It’s the burden of senselessness that we insist on carrying at all costs.
One of the biggest problems with recycling is it still has a very strong association with what we call "trash." Recycling needs to challenge the intellect with the idea of "transformation." Recycled items should no longer look like trash, nor even look recycled. It's as if the materials went through a metamorphosis. What needs to happen is "fine art" and craftsmanship. Recycling should reproduce something incredibly beautiful. Like nature, disintegrate and create in an ongoing state of beauty; that is a part of the ever-changing experience of life.
Sometimes I even think the name "recycling" needs to change. The name, "recycling" has a mundane, connotation. It doesn't sound like it is going anywhere. It should be called (Hummm---I have to think about that one)--something indicative of process and transformation. And then, I realize that it is a good name. It's what it means that has to change. When I say, "recycle" to myself, it is starting to mean and create a vision of living that is imaginative, wholesome and very desirable. It's coming. Yes! I'm calling it The Resource Recycling Center. The word resource at this point is a good addition to help people associate recycling with a world that has great potential that must be valued.
The Resource Recycling Center goes on the list for being a main location for tourists. There, people from around the world come to see demonstrations of a beautiful way of life created in harmony with nature. Like a small world's fair, small proto-types of buildings, gardens, new sustainable learning games and toys for children, living areas, bathrooms, home kitchens and pantries with attractive recycle accessories* in place, new ideas for transport, new approaches to composting and much more are demonstrated. The center becomes a place where people can imagine themselves moving toward new life patterns that are even more wonderful and interesting than their old life style.
*Recycling assessories are aesthetic items that are part of the system of daily living. These are a few which include:
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Attractive special grinders that can grind food scarps into smaller pieces that can easily be recycled.
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Special kitchen or pantry bins for separating items that can be recycled.
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A Personal Energy and Recycling Journal for tracking and measuring tangible changes towards sustainable living
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Thermophilic composting system
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Air and water monitors
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Composting bins
Recycling becomes an integrating template. Basic recycling principles are fostered without compromising the important contributions of our many cultures. Recycling has been done for thousands of years all around the world. Wisdom of what we have forgotten comes to life as people from diverse cultures contribute the many ways recycling has been approached through their cultures. New knowledge about energy augments, enhances ancient ideas and brings the wisdom of the past into the present and launches into the most sophisticated futuristic possibilities.
The Resource Recycling Center is very user friendly; it is a place of communication and involvement. As an information center, people are asking questions and connecting--"Oh, so that’s how to do it," or "I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, but seeing it done and talking to somebody about it really helps." These are the dialogues about how to recycle and how to move from a "consumer culture" to a "recycling culture." It’s a place that is more than just a one-time visit. It becomes a place where people want to return repeatedly not only to recycle, but also to see, learn, rekindle hope, make friends and experience the birth of new ideas. They bring their family, friends and visitors. What is really happening is the recycling center is starting to take the place of the typical shopping mall.
The Recycling Center Emerges as a New Direction
(Grouping of Interesting and Exciting Entities that Form a Mall Which Serves Specific Ecological and Social Needs).
The typical shopping mall encourages addictive consumerism that often is not based on need but on impulse buying that in the long run benefits the industry at the expense of the consumer. In contrast, the recycling mall has a specific agenda based on other principles that include the practical and aesthetic well-being of the consumer and ecosystem. This type of mall helps persons integrate more harmoniously into nature rather than be the dominators of it.
Teenagers are drawn to the recycling center instead of the regular mall. The typical shopping mall trains people of all ages especially teenagers to be irresponsible consumers. A shift away from this type of consumerism is possible if we as a society can change our relationship to objects and embrace space, action and communication as more desirable than objects. Our attitudes begin to change; a new sense of community begins to emerge as we become more aware of our society and environment on a personal level.
People integrate these beginning patterns by seeing how materials can be prepared at home for recycling. Not only is "the doing of recycling" important, but the attitude about what it's all about and what materials are, is equally important. It is essential for people to see they are handling "resources" and not "trash." Well then, what is "trash?" This question encourages a snowball of even more questions about the intrinsic nature of the materials and objects that come into our lives. It's in pursuing the response to what is trash that we can learn what is toxic, what is causing global warming, what is ruining our planet. It is important to educate ourselves about the impact of harmful materials and contaminants. What are these materials and what is our relationship to them?
People are eager to know what the latest developments are in decreasing global warming, developing new strategies for healthier living and what is happening in other countries around the world. Everything about life is talked about and "dialogue" is alive and well.
People are taking clean prepared materials to recycle at the Resource Recycling Center. In this location there is an organic grocery store. People can get discounts on their groceries in exchange for prepared recycled materials taken to the recycling center. In this organic grocery store and all stores located in the recycle complex, all items are packaged with recycled and biodegradable materials. In essence, it is impossible to shop at these types of stores and buy anything that is harmful to the environment. All materials from these stores are readily taken by the recycling center and also all foods are organic and food scraps from them can be accepted for making into healthy compost. There is more of a movement toward integration; a re-definition of specialization as it relates to the "whole." Local economy is strengthened by recirculating recycled materials within the community.
Recycling News
Besides the library providing books on the environment, films, concerts, performances, art and environmental exhibits and lectures, the Resource Recycling Center is a source of environmental news through broadcasts and newsletters.
People contribute their personal stories about the environment--success stories and also failure stories about their experience with trying to recycle. They are becoming more concerned and involved with improving environmental health of the world. Also included are ways to bring up issues and approach the legislature about recycling.
At The Resource Recycling Center, there is an ongoing "call for papers." Ideas and new methods for problem solving are constantly being presented. The recycle center has a small radio station where interviews, music about the environment and latest trends and announcement of exhibits, live music concerts, performances, poetry, storytelling, radio plays about the environment can be broadcast every day. There is an atmosphere of thinking and discovering that creates interest and excitement. People of all ages and backgrounds present ideas concerning sustainability, recycling, community, and way of life. People become more educated and aware of nuclear contamination, acid rain, oil spills, global warming, social issues and other environmental, life-threatening situations at a local, regional, national and global level. The interactive context which encourages local and international speakers and cultural exchanges further develops awareness and interest of environmental issues at The Resource Recycling Center. A network of local, national and global consciousness begins to emerge.
The recycling center is supporting itself by selling its recycled products, recycling accessories, resource materials, membership fees, donations given by members, visitors, proceeds from concerts and exhibits. It even generates enough money to fund special recycling projects in the U.S. and abroad and also create a new economic base that supports persons on the local level that are interested in working for a new, healthy and innovative way of life. Through need for change, public interest and demand--word of mouth is reborn and everybody hears about this exciting place that gives hope. Interest and membership expands as its visibility through website, email, Internet and all forms of public announcement of its ongoing activities increases.
Cycles within Cycles
In thinking about and observing the natural cycles of nature, one begins to feel more and more cycles happening within the larger cycle system. Within our physical beings are so many cycles--cells being born, cells dying, breathing, blood circulating, the menstrual cycle in women, digestion and much more. We are primarily "cycles within cycles." We are many circular motions in harmonious action that re-occur; patterns that manifest, variations that gently augment the cycle without changing its basic character whether it be large or small.
These cycles can generate life or de-generation. It comes down to "intent." If the cycle patterns are in motion with elements that nurture life then there is a synergistic, geometrically multiplying energy that manifests abundance. If the elements are poisonous or are missing in part, the cycles begin to generate and intensify toxic and harmful effects. Imbalances occur and begin to escalate mirroring the power of the cycle in negative ways. Cycles are powerful, gravitational and what elements or lack of (which I describe as the "intent") creates energy that manifests abundance of life sustaining energy or life threatening toxic and destructive de-generation. Cycles move between consonance and dissonance. That is why appreciating cycles in nature are important.
Beauty emanates continually, drawing us ever closer to the mysterious nature of the cycle. Just being open to appreciating beauty opens the door of our sensitivities. Then we experience our own beauty operating within its cycles.
Our lives change when we become a recycling culture. We begin to look at all the ways that we live and start to become more sensitive to how energy is used. Experimentation with a variety of methods begins to happen. We start to participate more in our own sustainability rather than remaining so dependent on other entities to provide all our energy and living needs. Our imaginations start to open up to include more approaches to life that are nurturing. As recycling encourages sustainability, approaches to acquiring food, clothing and shelter change. An extended living vocabulary based on maximizing local resources and initiatives immerges such as solar dried foods, eating fresh locally grown foods from small family gardens, community gardens and farmers markets.
Recycling centers align with organic trends in agriculture and a desire to decrease and eliminate use of toxic chemicals; less waste and greater efficiency of what materials can be recycled into. It becomes less desirable to use virgin materials to create basic goods and building materials. Virgin materials are prioritized. I would consider acoustic musical instruments made out of virgin materials to be an acceptable priority.
Redirection of Materials
It is possible to stop enabling industries that are harmful to society and the environment by redirecting recycled materials to production of more earth friendly industries that cause less or no pollution or can be easily redirected again and again. These suggestions are only a few. There are many redirection alternatives that are environmentally friendly.
Tires
Although thrown away tires are used in construction of homes; it is possible to consider directing automotive tires towards the bicycle industry for bicycle tires.
*I am not directing materials in this recycling idea to automotive transport because I feel that its present form is going to become obsolete.
Industrial Hemp
(An Alternative to Deforestation)
In some articles Industrial Hemp is approached with caution and reserve as a serious alternative to wood. There is a tendency to be doubtful of its industrial capabilities. It is important to read through the lines of "it can’t be done." I just read a beautifully illustrated brochure of the Hemp Industries Association and it said, "This is printed on HEMP content paper." This was so encouraging to me to be holding such positive evidence of good paper not made out of trees (95% of paper is made from wood pulp).
Presently, Industrial Hemp is not legal in the U.S. This may change as more evidence concludes that Industrial Hemp is not like marijuana and is not practical as a smokable intoxicant.
The oldest surviving paper over 2,000 years old from China was made from hemp fiber (Fleming and Clarke 1998). A wealth of products are made from Industrial Hemp (paper, textiles, accessories, cosmetics, foods, beverages, house wares, apparel, building materials, composts and more. The Hemp Industries Association says, "More than thirty nations grow industrial hemp today, and the U.S. is the largest consumer of hemp products."
Prioritization of Wood
There is a problem with fruit tree prunings and prunings in general. Prunings pile up and become a fire hazard. Burning them was a traditional way of getting rid of prunings. Agricultural burn methods are becoming a more limited means of problem solving because it is no longer ecological (global warming). Farmers cannot get permits to do traditional burning nor is hauling them to the landfill a solution. This problem is having a very serious impact on orchardists being able to grow food. A solution to prunings is to make them into chips for creating paper. The highway department is always cutting down limbs of trees. These prunings can also be used in the same manner. This way, there is a wood product for producing paper without killing trees and forests.
Metal
Tin can be directed toward making solar ovens. The solar oven I imagine is created with traditional hole-punch used in Northern New Mexico Folk Arts and Crafts.
Metal can be recycled for making bicycles, irrigation gates, etc.
Glass
Glass can be recycled into windowpanes for weatherization, glass containers for food storage and glass for fruit juices and milk, home canning jars, etc. The idea is to produce items that further enhance a sustainable lifestyle that is environmentally compatible.
*Drinking fresh juice is best that you’ve just made yourself from organic fruit. Second best choice is drinking fruit juices that are bottled in glass. This is much healthier than drinking carbonated drinks from aluminum cans.
The Importance of the Bicycle
The movement away from the bicycle and more towards the car placed this mode of transportation (the bike) in a state of retirement. Globally, the bicycle went from relatively high use as a serious mode of transportation to recreational use. During this process of decline there was an ever-going escalation of the automobile, truck and semi.
Our mode of transport has gotten bigger and is in direct response to the industrial explosion and consumer development and growth. This has thrust us into a Dark Age of Technology. It has been brought about by industries that have not been able to rapidly transform.
Many industries stay locked in a time frame of their development and are not changing rapidly enough. This locked state is best exemplified by the interdependence of our current mode of transport, the highways that are built to accommodate them and also the fuels that are used to run them. This also includes the parts that are created to build the land fleet that carries consumer goods. This interdependent transport/oil/highway relationship is the centerpiece of the monetary system and I would say a monument to the Dark Age of Technology.
Technology is not bad; it is just in a very harmful and primitive stage of development. We have yet to experience technology in a state of profound development. That will only happen when technologies can recognize and incorporate fundamental natural cycles that do not harm the environment.
By changing from a materialistic culture to a recycling culture there will be a decline in the need for material goods. This will influence the need for the type of transport we presently have. I envision another form of transport that will be based on other criteria, which will be communication. I do imagine a world where people continue to travel, but it will be in a much more advanced state that will not be harmful to the environment. In this imagined form of transport, which will encompass land, water and air travel, there will be no need for highways, as we know them today. There will be no asphalt highways. There will be no vehicles to travel on these obsolete highways and there will be no dependence on non-renewable fuels. There will also be no need to create these modes of transport out of non-renewable, non-biodegradable and toxic materials.
Eventually there will be an energy grid available to everyone that will be used for transport. It will also be a synergistic and healthy interdependent relationship between transport, energy (clean, renewable, and non-harmful) and communication.
The transitional step is going to be the bicycle. It is in getting smaller, experiencing physical relationship between movement and location and also in reorienting all our human senses. In this way we will be able to develop more advanced earth friendly technologies by re-experiencing physical reality of life through the senses. Our civilization tends to insulate us from our physical reality. Transportation by car is a good example of how much of our lives are spent incased in plastic, toxic fumes and white noise as we travel.
The Resource Recycling Center is bicycle friendly. There is a bicycle club for all ages. This membership, which is inclusive in the recycling center membership helps to increase interest in riding bicycles. It makes riding bicycles very visible to the public. Through advertising, people are encouraged to experience physical reality by riding a bicycle. Bicycle issues of safety and reintroduction of the bicycle as an important mode of transport creates a dramatic attitude shift. This allows for further changes such as increased and improved safety zones and lanes in cities for bicycle transportation. Additional changes would be incorporating one day a month when cities and towns would be "bicycle only" on all roads and highways. Also included are other forms of travel such as walking. This could be further extended to creating specific roads and routes that are for walking and bicycle without automobile traffic.
By strategically placing recycling centers on or near public transportation routes bicycle riders can use recycling centers as rest stops. The image of the bicycle and respect for those who ride them is enhanced. The image of the bicycle is put forth as an important cultural symbol and as a re-connecter of humans to their physical reality.
At the recycle center bicycles are created to be a multi use tool that can conveniently fold up and unfold. They transport people and also create forms of energy that can be used in the home. They can also store energy to be used later. They become places for selling bicycles, and a location for support efforts to interface bicycles with solar, electric energy devices in combination with physical energy.
When Recycling No Longer Enables Industries that are Creating Non-biodegradable Materials
What is enabling an industry?
Work: a Joyful, Meaningful and Productive Experience
Implementing work as a joyful artistic experience (craftsmanship)
Good work ethics and dignity in the work
Ongoing investment in the health and education of the employees
Creating a healthy, safe environment for employees and members
By emphasizing environmental monitoring and disassociating recycling from trash, recycling centers dramatically diminish the risk of exposure to diseases and toxic nuclear and chemical contamination.
The work environment should be caring. The recycling attitude is one of investing in the well-being of employees. The experience draws out the best in everyone. The company is about the effective coordination of full time, part time employees and volunteers.
The Down Stream Philosophy
(In Theory and Practice)
I remember when I would see a river it was only that part that I saw. The water was rushing by. It was easy to focus on the location and the season, like taking a photograph of it and isolating in time and space. By realizing that a river is part of a cycle, I now see the river differently. Although it is a sensorial experience, it is also a deeper intuitive experience. When I look at the river, I can imagine that it is very long and that it began in the mountains. I see the mouth of the river as it opens to the ocean*. I can imagine the water being drawn
*Several years ago a sand bar developed at the mouth of the Rio Grande where it normally enters the Gulf of Mexico.
up into the sky and drifting in clouds, which are drawn again to the mountains where it will snow. I envision the snow on the peaks of the mountains slowly melting and creating water for the river. This cannot be just an intellectual realization; it must be like a revelation.
When I look at the river, I also can imagine water traveling under the ground, which can move towards the river. I am more aware of what is contaminating the river by air and through the ground and by indiscriminate industrial dumping into its waters.
We need to increase our awareness of community. I am not alone! I realize that I am only one of many that need the river and water. There are people, plants, animals and fishes that have a relationship with the river and water. What happens to my neighbor down the river happens to me. What happens to my neighbor up the river happens to me. This awareness is the experience of the river in all its basic and related forms. Our cosmic consciousness becomes elevated as we realize the depth of our complex relationships. Awareness is greatly expanded if we can experience these relationships as sacred.
How We Recycle Ourselves
How we die and what happens to our bodies is important to consider if we move towards becoming a recycling culture. Death is the final statement that we have about our life. The question is would a person want to have their body injected with toxic chemicals? If one is to recycle and re-enter nature, doesn’t a coffin insulate a person from re-entering nature? How does one want to re-enter nature?
The Ongoing List
Schools visiting the recycling center
Creation of thermophilic compost
A place where questions and answers are always available free
The creation of beautiful recycling accessories
Recycling water
Water monitoring
A library of information related to recycling
A video and DVD library
A small movie theatre that has ongoing documentaries and films about environmental issues
Solar and other environmentally compatible energy research
Encourage your library to have a large environmental section of books, magazines for adults and children
A consultant team for businesses that want to integrate recycling into their environment, which includes good practices of non-waste
How physical reality and cyberspace can work together
Physical reality transforms virtual reality
Blame it on the flush toilet
Where do we waste?
Our throw away technology
The Personal Energy and Recycling Journal
Western Civilization has become so inundated with synthetic products, and we have become so overwhelmingly dependent on them that it is hard to imagine our lives without them. It is hard to accept that the world is near ruin by the pollutants that have been produced by our civilization that is largely dependent on synthetics, nuclear industry, over use of resources, waste of our water and intense use of pesticides, toxins, and chemicals. We are so surrounded by such a high level of contamination that we have become indifferent and are in a state of "psychic numbing*." For years we have shut down and refused to experience the crisis. We don’t know where to begin and many of us feel helpless to change our world. This is because we do not have a simple means of measuring our individual progress in creating positive change.
*Psychic numbing—a mental state of denial of an ongoing environmental crisis of devastating magnitude
Using a journal format to document day-to-day new life patterns helps the individual see how they are integrating a recycling culture. It can provide a "measurable" means of tracking personal progress in making new life transitions. The Personal Energy and Recycling Journalcan have valuable websites to go to, suggestions and information. This journal can also be used in a group setting called a goals group at The Resource Recycle Center. These are people who gather in small groups of four or five persons with their journals, compare notes and discuss their energy and recycling needs. They determine their personal environmental goals that they want to achieve. They may even as a group, have a “group goal” as well. Through weekly or monthly meetings they can accurately track where they are in relation to achieving their individual goals. The group setting helps to provide a sense of community support and an environment for making friends with a common interest in creating positive environmental change.
The journal empowers the individual and group environmental research. Persons using the journal method can name the products that are not harmful to the environment. They go to stores and politicians in their communities and point out their product preferences and desire to recycle. Stores and politicians begin to listen as more and more citizens want to recycle and use biodegradable, organic, recyclable products.
The journal method can also be used for industries that are eager to transition their companies as fast as possible into sustainable formats by goal setting, planning and tracking.
The Economic Benefit of Recycling
In the past, citizens have not experienced the economic benefit of recycling. That is because the public has been taught to view what they discard as "trash." If people began to think of everything as a "resource," recycling would be experienced as an economic benefit. There is often another entity that is deriving economic benefit from the materials that are being recycled at the expense of the citizen. At times citizens are given a very nominal deposit or fee for the material or they even have to pay a location to take materials they have to recycle. Further down the line, entities are making a profit. There needs to be a direct financial gain for the citizen who is recycling. The person who recycles, shares in the economic benefit of the process.
Replicating the Resource Recycling Center
The recycling center should be replicated or designed to vary in size from a small space in a public building, to a building or a mall complex made of recycled materials to compliment the size of a small town, larger city or huge metropolis.
The center moves continually towards handling fewer objects. Society is gradually changing its patterns and living with greater contentment with fewer material goods. Although the products are fewer, they are of much higher quality, durability, aesthetics and craftsmanship.
These recycling centers support activities that are non-polluting such as visual arts, literary and performing arts, environmental education, dance, music, poetry, concerts, massage, yoga, natural healing arts, environmental medicine and a fusion of medical and natural healing arts.
Learning about building and design (using earth building adobe, recycled materials or a combination of earth building and recycled materials) of homes, communities and cities is encouraged and experimented with through physical and virtual reality models. Learning how to build and design is approached as an art form. If started early in life, children become accomplished builder/designers by the time they were 16 years. Building and design and other subjects are taught at the recycling center.
Water and Air Monitoring and the Recycling Center
Water and air monitoring, over a period of time, helps to set reachable goals concerning the health of the river and air. The capacity to measure how healthy a river is and how clean the air we breathe helps to cultivate and maintain a high awareness of our environment. It is important to research and establish criteria that explicitly describes what a healthy river is. Monitoring helps to educate the pubic about the importance of the river and treat rivers and air with respect. It helps to foster a responsible partnership with nature and establish multiple approaches to problem solving. It alerts the public to dangerous misuse of the river as a dump for toxic materials and waste. By making air and water monitoring a human right, we are insured of greater safety and health of our environment.
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Industries should pay a recycle tax and pollution penalties tax. The recycling tax is high if the industries are creating items that do not recycle. If they are an industry that recycles and uses biodegradable materials and implements recycling practices in their business then the tax goes down and they start to receive tax credits. Taxes that are accumulated go towards establishing re-cycling centers, scientific research in how to eliminate landfills, oil and nuclear contamination areas and how to neutralize nuclear disposal and other toxic pollutants and strengthen areas of sustainable energy, solar and other.
Simultaneous Local/Regional/National/Global Awareness
The local Resource Recycling Center is a part of a network of worldwide recycling centers. It is a way in which citizens can get to know each other as people (create friendships and a sense of community) through intercommunication about environmental issues. Together they can form coalitions and create agendas that help to form laws that protect and enhance the health of the citizen and protect eco system rights. These coalitions can also help to promote research about how to neutralize nuclear and other long lasting toxic contaminates. A greater awareness and concern is shared as people become more involved and educated about what is harming the environment. Persons hear and respond. They point out locally, nationally and internationally what is harming the environment. Citizens become a regulating, legal force that helps stop industries that are polluting and creating serious hazardous conditions that are harmful to the environment and dangerous to society.
Outreach Function of the Recycle Center
Volunteers visit communities. They have town meetings at community centers and hand out brochures about The Resource Recycle Center, what it is and how to join. They educate communities about why and how to recycle through lectures, visuals and demonstrations. There are home visits made by volunteers where they can speak on a more individual basis and also conduct surveys. Volunteers can offer suggestions about how to get started with recycling and revisit the families they first saw to see how they are making progress.
Other outreach can be done through radio shows, lectures, visiting schools, businesses, politicians, churches, senior centers and all community service locations.
The Landfill
(Filling the Land with Nature)
A new type of landfill emerges. Instead of filling the land with heavy metal pollutants, dangerous chemicals, toxins and non-biodegradable trash, people can bring unprocessed organic compost materials (food scraps) in exchange for ready to use finished compost.
The Organic Garden
(An Important and Necessary Feature of
Sustainable Living~At Home~In the Community~At The Resource Recycle Center)
Everyone has a human right to grow their own food in rural areas and also in cities. This can be the smallest Square Foot Garden, French Intensive Garden, Intensive gardening techniques, small garden, a potted plant garden, roof garden, community garden. It is in the garden that nature can teach us a lot about its cycles. Gardening and also being out in the wilds of nature gives us a chance to observe and learn about natural cycles and the smaller cycles that exist within the larger ones.
Inner supportive and efficient Permaculture is another way of integrating multiple environmental living conditions into a whole that enhances healthy, daily living. Nature is beautiful in all its diversity. Our environment beautifies and miraculously draws us into its profound inner relationships as it sustains our eco diversity, which reaffirms our kinship to all living things.
The Family Organic Garden
Gardening provides a sense of being together in a way that brings out so many skills and creativity. It is very empowering when you know you can collect your own good seed and grow the food that you eat especially without chemicals. There are many techniques that gardeners have created (Bill Mullison’s Global Gardening) that have made organic gardening viable.
The garden can be a sanctuary, a special place and time spent working together which helps to nurture and sustain each other in the family and benefit the family as a unit. The earth has so much to teach us; one of earth’s greatest storybooks is the garden. It is in the garden that respect for the soil, water, seed, plants and insects, can be learned. It is there that we can shift our dependence from a synthetic environment to the natural world. As the family experiences the dependence, enjoyment and desire for the garden, a greater sensitivity evolves with mutual respect and love.
The Community Organic Garden
Community organic gardens are great for cities where land is scarce. These gardens help to foster a "kindred spirit" and a mutual meeting ground for small communities. There, people can get to know each other. Neighborhoods can overcome the isolation that our modern times have created. Individuals of all ages, backgrounds and families can talk, visit and share in the joy and beauty of a garden as well as learn how to "work" together, take responsibility, communicate and merge into the cycles of nature through gardening.
Organic Farmers Markets
Participating in a farmer's market can be a very rewarding experience. Growing tips are shared among farmers. Farmers barter and trade among themselves. People enjoy coming early in the morning to buy their vegetables. Everyone talks about the weather, water, soil growing and there is often live music. Environmental concerns are always an important topic. Amid the smells of harvest, colorful, radiant flowers, fruits and vegetables there is dialogue and appreciation of each other's efforts to grow food and relate to the land.
People forget that a lot can be grown in a very small space. It is possible to have gardens. There are many water harvesting and recycling techniques that are possible to use, even though there is a concern that there is not enough water. What there is not enough of is imagination. We have made our water scarce by creating systems that wastewater. Through imaginative water conservation, understanding the hydrologic cycle and water rationing it is possible to have beautiful, bountiful gardens that can feed us.
Quickly Raising the First Prototype Resource Recycle Center
Global Warming is rapidly increasing. Our environment is in so much trouble that there is no time to waste! WITH CAREFUL PLANNING WE CAN RAISE AN OPERATIONAL RESOURCE RECYCLE CENTER IN ONE DAY as a formal building structure is being built which takes months. The fastest way to start is to raise a huge tent made out of canvas created from Industrial Hemp.
or
Barn Raising with Recycled Materials--Barn raising is a Mennonite/Amish custom where the whole community joins together to create a barn or house in one day (or just a few days).
The Urgency
It is not a matter of changing a few habits (although that will help). We are at a point where our Western Civilization is destroying the planet. I feel there is less time than we think. We must make huge changes in the basic concept of Western Civilization and accept that our views of "modernization," or what we consider to be modern and really isn't, must change. We have to create empty space inside ourselves for new ideas to be born. The new ideas will be a dramatic change and will help us to make the great leap into a more enlightened relationship with the planet.
From Dream to Reality
One of the biggest concerns is how to create actual recycling at the recycle center. Large-scale automation has always tried to achieve efficiency as a primary goal. Efficient low cost realities are not concerned with beauty. Aesthetics are viewed as impractical and costly. I think of employees and their jobs. Without beauty and aesthetics as an important component to the process, the person is "automized" and made less thinking, feeling and less human and more machine-like.
From my research, present locations that mash up cars and metals, factories that recycle glass and facilities with separators that go through trash are ugly places. The workers appear to be doing "tasks that no one else wants to do." Sometimes what they are doing looks hazardous--working with glass, metals--in a sense still dealing with trash that no one wants. Recycling plants are often far away from sorting stations--sometimes as far away as overseas in Asia. How does one change this lowly, hazardous, undesirable task into an aesthetic, exciting, constantly learning, safe and upward mobility experience with work ethics and beautiful transformed recycled product?
Mirror the Experience
Instead of starting with huge amounts of resources to recycle, why not start with the very smallest amount? It would be easier to classify each stage of the recycle process and implement approaches that would combine aesthetics, efficiency, safety, non-toxic reproduction procedures, receiving, final product. What would it take to reproduce one box of glass, metal, wood, tires? Is it possible to start as small as possible? What would make the process beautiful, interesting, useful, important and healthy to be around? Would the worker be energized by the experience and feel that the work was exciting--something to be proud of? These attitudes impact the quality of the product. Vice versa--the product and how it’s made impacts the worker and all attitudes of self worth. Domestic violence would decrease if employees felt valued, cared for, by those that employ them. A job that promotes integrity and self worth, promotes a society that can practice love.
Recycling successfully done on a small scale can be replicated on a larger scale. This approach keeps the income in the community. The recycling process can expand and contract according to need making it more efficient, effective and reliable.
As the Dream Unfolds
Can we stop global warming and change our harmful attitudes and actions? As we awaken and experience the profoundness of our nature we see and recognize an ancient and futuristic self-awareness. Who are we? Why were we born? Were did we come from? And where are we going? When we feel a sense of joy tying into the answer of each question, we will know that we are on the right path--yes, it’s that walk in beauty that is the experience of life recycling, making its own music of the cosmos without disruption.
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