Why Recycle? Keep the damn thing or throw it away.

I saw an ecoblog today listing ten things that most people don't know can't be recycled, like pizza boxes or wet contaminated paper of all sorts or coloured paper. I thought, "Finally, an environmentalist who gets it, I have permission to throw stuff in the trash.".

As I read on I was reminded of an experiment conducted in a typical southern California neighborhood about the sorting of trash for residential recycling because the article began to refer me to specialty recycling and disposal centers for the items that were on the list.

In the experiment, participants agreed that it would be best for the environment to sort their household trash into nine different coloured curbside bins. That's right. Nine.

I found that by dropping off items around town, scheduling a pickup for others and by mailing my deadly, mercury filled, CFL's in, I could sort my waste and get rid of almost all of without throwing anything away. Awesome. I can sleep tonight knowing that I can save the planet. Get real.

What is the overall impact on the environment if we trade the energy and waste that it takes to accomplish the sorting of your household into nine different recycling bins for the energy and waste for just throwing it away?

My point is, environmental responsibility is less about recycling and more about sustainability.

I have tossed away more junk in the last ten years than I care to think about. Most of it because when it stopped working there was no way (or no sense) in fixing it so I don't reuse it.

Plastic bottles get taken away, transported around ground up, heated and made into other things, but at a level lower like pillows or purses, not bottles again. Keeping them and using them as containers again around the house will give me all sorts of cancers, so I don't reuse them either like I would a glass bottle.

Give me durability and re-usability. Mcmansions, houses with movie set front entrances yet built out of drywall and studs and so called palaces are not destined to stand for three hundred years like the real Versailles let alone a thousand or more. Not like the Torre de Hercules.

It's time we started thinking about building things that will continue to serve their purpose without needing replacement. Planned obsolescence is as outdated as the winner having the most toys.