A Penny 'Saved'

I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable with people's rhetoric about "saving." A friend posted a link about someone who paid down $10,000 of credit card debt in a year by making his morning coffee at home instead of buying from a coffee shop, going from a two-car to a one-car family, "making do" with a pre-paid and more basic phone and plan, etc. Yesterday I was reading a post where a woman was asking about money-earning possibilities from home after where comment after comment recommended (rather unsolicitedly and completely ignoring the fact that she'd already stated how frugally they were living and only wanted to hear about income opportunities) she cut her cable subscription, go from two cars to one, get rid of a land line and/or go down to the basic cell plan, stop eating out, etc. What I want to know is why we consider having a $90 cable package, $80 cell phone plan, (multi-?)weekly restaurant visits, two cars, daily lattes, and the like the norm.

It's not really "saving" money to replace a daily $4 caffeinated beverage of choice with a 12-cent cup brewed at home; it's just not wasting it as egregiously. It's not being super-frugal to cut your cable package from all-inclusive super-deluxe premium package to basic cable + internet. It's really kind of offensive to read money-saving tips from people who assume that everyone is just handing huge sums of money out on a monthly basis to whomever asks for it in exchange for the merest convenience or entertainment. You don't need cable TV (I use a $10-a-month Netflix subscription for movies and free Hulu for the TV I watch; even that's unnecessary and could be cut were my straits direr or if I just decided to stop wasting so much time or kill so many brain cells); you don't need to buy coffee every morning (or, for that matter, drink coffee at all, heresy though that may appear); some people get by perfectly well without owning cars and aren't necessarily pursuing that out of desperation but as part of their regular life (though I do acknowledge that not everyone's current living/working situation makes that possible).

I find it highly ridiculous that either people think they're being frugal by paying slightly less for really pretty cushy and objectively superfluous, unnecessary, or even harmful things or that the average person isn't actually anywhere near that prodigal but thinks everyone else in the entire country is engaging in the utmost of hedonistic consumption. It's not like you get points simply for being below average consumption or that everyone deserves or is guaranteed a certain standard of living (well, yes, philosophically I think they do, but considerably lower than the one under discussion) and anything under that is virtuous abnegation and "doing without."

Of course, when it's money under discussion, income is quite relevant. If you make enough money to be able to afford all the above-listed things, I'm not saying they're inherently bad things to spend money on (though I personally hope to avoid them despite my income), but if you have tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt that you can pay off by cutting out coffee shop drinks and cable, I'd imagine the way you got it is exactly by making those expenditures to begin with. It is definitely, unequivocally not saving money to give up these things, then; it's simply not going (further) into debt, not living beyond your means.

This type of thinking is even worse when it comes to talk of "saving" energy. This NYT article reminded me of my increasing discomfort (though really its take is overall pretty good). It seems like people feel entitled to a certain amount of energy consumption and that the slightest bit of consumption under that activates feelings of deprivation or of virtuous forbearance. It's kind of silly to talk of "saving" water by turning off the tap while you're brushing your teeth (well, for one thing, does anyone actually not do this?) or by turning down/up the thermostat when you're not at home or by having your DVR player have the option to go into deep sleep when its not needed; in fact, you're using water, gas, or electricity to do any of these things and you're just not using/consuming/wasting as much when you turn things off or down.

The default is nothing. The earth didn't contract with us to permit us each X number of tons of carbon emission per year, Y gallons of water per day, or Z gallons of gas per week, and then it will start exacting penalties once those levels are reached. Each of these things we consume harms our environment or climate; the goal is to use as little as possible, not simply less than what's "reasonable" for a person living in a developed nation in modern times. (Money, as I said, is a little different since you do in fact have a certain amount you can spend up to and no further.)

I don't watch TV; I turn my computer off when I'm not using it; I unplug my cell charger when it's not actually charging my phone; I don't let water run when I'm not actively using it; I walk and take public transportation rather than driving; I don't eat resource-intensive beef or overly processed foods; I don't have air conditioning and keep the heater on a timer and still pretty low even when I'm home; I don't replace things like my MP3 player until they break even if they're crappy and better ones exist. I could (and, yeah, pretty much still do) feel holier-than-thou for everything I'm saving and all the good I'm doing; instead (/in addition) I'm horrified by the amount of water required per time I flush the toilet (1.6 gallons in a low-flow toilets; I think it's 3.5 for older ones) and feel bad (when I think about it, yes) for using my computer at all, for not keeping the thermostat still lower, for living in a space that's larger than what I would technically need, for buying things that aren't absolutely necessary for survival (um, it's quite possible to live without owning an MP3 player), for buying food I know has been shipped in from California or Mexico or Kansas or Florida... I mean, I don't obsess over it, and I don't suppose I think people should (mental health is important too), but I do consider it, I am made uncomfortable by it, and I do try to reduce it further where I can. I think rather than activating all our cognitive tricks to assuage whatever guilt we feel for living and consuming the way we do and then congratulating ourselves for not living worse, we should be willing to live with the discomfort, acknowledging that our choices aren't actually the best.

Otherwise we fall prey to the pat-yourself-on-the-back kind of environmentalism that ends up not actually making any improvements but merely keeps things from getting worse. (This is one reason cap and trade has never completely won my support, since rather than requiring cutting as much as possible it picks a level of "acceptable" pollution and lets everyone pollute up to that point. I mean, I still support it, it's obviously better than nothing, and it's likely the only thing that would work without strangling our economic system which people seem to be rather attached to...) I don't know why humanity has to feel like it's doing good all the time. You can feel it's necessary and justifiable to do certain things and still feel it's regrettable that you have to, that that's not the best possible course of action in an ideal world, and want to minimize them as much as possible (see: death penalty, eating meat, cutting social programs in a recession). I do think we have a right to be on this earth and to live flourishing lives, but we have a responsibility to live as lightly as we can and not to excessively harm other things in so doing.

Six Point Eight Pounds

Six point eight pounds. Three and a half inches. Twenty-seven items. What's that? The stack of catalogs* I have received in the past two(ish) months.

Over the past two years or so, catalogs have slowly gotten to a point where they are capable of inducing mouth-frothing rage in me. I hate them, but they simply keep coming! (In merely the past two days, there were eight of them! I know it's the holiday season, but come on!) I have never requested a catalog in my life. I don't purchase things from catalogs. Many of the ones I receive are for companies from whom I have never purchased anything. I unsubscribe from them as soon as I receive them, yet after a short break for decency's sake, it seems they always keep coming. And, since I moved three months ago, I've been drowning in even more catalogs for previous residents (mostly one previous resident, whose catalog problem, assuming she considered it a problem, dwarfs mine).

Yet, since I do purchase things online, it looks like I am doomed to receive catalogs until I die...and probably long after. And unfortunately I haven't noticed any space for notes or anything in most online checkouts where I can put a note requesting not to get a mailings. I assume if I actually made orders by phone I could request to be put on some list of "Please never ever send catalogs to these people because they might explode or something," but the internet doesn't seem to give me that option. Annoying.

This kind of bothers me for privacy reasons and because they're trying to exploit my weak willpower and because there isn't really an opt-out option at the point of "solicitation," but mostly it's the sheer waste. It makes me so angry that trees are being wasted to create and energy is being consumed to process, print, and deliver unsolicited and undesired materials to me. I try to be environmentally responsible, and I decidedly do not enjoy my efforts being overwhelmed by my forced complicity in everyone else's kill-the-earth marketing schemes. Yes, I'm recycling the catalogs, but that doesn't negate all the energy wasted to bring them into their short-lived existence.

Oh, and I particularly love their proclamations: "[...] 'green' is more than just a color in fashion apparel! Not only are our catalogs recyclable, we proudly use paper from sustainably managed forests"; "[...] catalogues are printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and contain 10 to 30 percent post-consumer recycled material." Oh, well that's all fine, then. I was concerned about wasting resources, but gratuitous waste doesn't matter as long as it's from sustainably managed forests. Don't get me wrong, I'd certainly prefer them use FSC-certified materials and recycled materials and everything, but you know what would be even better? Scrapping paper entirely and marketing online where your only costs are negligible electricity (or not marketing at all, but I suppose that's a bit much to legitimately expect). I'm not terribly knowledgeable, but I assume privacy rules are more stringent with email than with postal mail and that's why they don't do that? That seems entirely backward; you can always filter your email, and nothing's really hurt by the production of excess email, but when it's real, physical, paper things invading your life and having real-world consequences? Enh, no biggie.

It terrifies me to envision what the drifting year-at-a-time renting habits of my cohort must be doing for junk mail—we move blithely from apartment to apartment, unwittingly leaving ever-increasing trails of junk mail fanning out in our wake. We're long gone, but our "or current resident" mail lives on. I hate to imagine how many apartments the average twenty-something woman leaves receiving Victoria's Secret catalogs for years after her departure.

I've been using Catalog Choice for a year or two in an attempt to control my unruly catalogs, which has helped. Since this August (when I moved) I have requested for myself to be removed from 11 mailing lists, for the aforementioned previous resident of my current apartment to be removed from 17 (!!), and for five other previous residents to be removed from one each. Three different people (none of whom still live here) were receiving Crate & Barrel catalogs!

If it hadn't been for the move, I think I would have finally almost had it under control (with the exception of the one or two companies I do actually patronize semi-regularly, who apparently add me back to their mailing list every time I purchase something else from them). The problem with the move was that I was under the impression that filling out the change-of-address form with the post office was the responsible thing to do as it would merely forward anything to me that I forgot about in my address-changing spree so I could rectify the oversight and would prevent my old roommate from receiving random stuff addressed to me (with the exception of catalogs, which, since they're usually addressed to "or current resident" get delivered regardless). Now I know better. Not only do they provide your address to anyone who requests forwarding information, they actually sell the lists of new addresses to direct mailers.

I just did some research, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse site seems to have a lot of useful information (and look much more official than the other things I ran across...) about ridding oneself of junk mail. The Direct Marketing Association, which is where many direct mailers get their lists, has a site where you can set your preferences either catalog-by-catalog or in a lump (for multiple addresses, too!). Anyone who is a member of the DMA will have to update their databases periodically and once that has happened will not be able to send you catalogs; however, this unfortunately doesn't apply to companies whom you actually patronize. (Also, I'm not entirely convinced it works, because when I went to go submit the form, it turns out I already had a profile, which means I had already submitted such a request and shouldn't have been receiving catalogs from people I hadn't purchased anything from... Maybe the catalogs I receive are from companies who are not members of the DMA?) They can also direct you to a site to stop getting credit card offers (which, if I have already done, is extremely effective, as I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten a credit card offer from anyone except my current credit card company in several years).

I hope submitting another request with the DMA helps, and now I'm newly inspired to actually call some companies to try to get on the special list of permanent removal now that it turns out such things do exist. (I had thought they should, but obviously that's no guarantee of anything.)

It just really, really bothers me that companies don't even have to offer an opt-out of mailings in online checkout. Obviously if I'm making an online purchase, that means I'm perfectly capable of Googling the company's name and completing a purchase without the reminder or aid of a catalog. In fact, it might even be reasonable to assume I prefer online ordering to phone or mail (do people even still do that?) ordering. It would also be reasonable to think that if I'm ordering from their website, perhaps emails would be a better way to draw me in. Sending me a catalog requires that I actually look at it, then if I decide I want something, that I either call or go to the website. If I get an email, I'm already at my computer, and I can just click a link and buy something in probably less than a minute. It seems pretty obvious to me that online marketing would be way more effective (at least to the Millennial generation) than any sort of physical paper marketing to close sales. Of course, it's also easier to opt out of, which is I guess why they keep doing the impossible-to-opt-out-of paper mailings. Really I think it probably just never occurs to them that there are people in the world who care so much about paper.

On a related note, it really bothers me when charities send me mailings (especially when they include cards or return-address labels or something) to solicit donations. I am never going to donate to a charity who is spending a sizeable chunk of the money donated to them mailing out physical letters; that's like a big neon light that says, "We have high overhead costs!"

* My default is "catalogue," but since I am apparently the only person in the entire world, or at least the U.S., or at least under the age of 40, who prefers that, I'm letting spell checkers and constant exposure to the abbreviated version wear me down so I'll look slightly less pedantic. "Dialogue" still has the -ue, though...unless it's a "dialog box." Don't ask how I make these rules for myself.

"And When You're Living in America [...] You're What You Own"

I've been reading a lot of minimalist blogs and articles and stuff lately (read enough about natural food and eating and about being environmentally responsible and sustainable, and you'll hit minimalism sooner or later), so I've gotten inspired (and/or the crazy hippie bug has infected me full force). Now, a lot of people are doing challenges like living with fewer than 100 personal items, going three months wearing only 33 items of clothing, or wearing only 6 items of clothing for a month. I'm not going to pretend I even want to do anything that drastic.

Well, OK, the clothes ones, which I encountered before the 100-Thing Challenge, intrigued me for about two minutes. But see, here's the thing. Doing a one-month experiment where you only wear six items of clothing is interesting and a challenge, yes, but what good does it actually do? You still own everything else you own, you're just not using it. That's exactly the opposite of what I want to do. I'm not hung up on the number of items of clothes I own, but to me, the whole point of a functioning wardrobe is that you wear everything in it on a regular basis. Once you own something, you should definitely use it, and if you're not, then you should get rid of it. (Of course, the people participating in the two clothing challenges may decide at the end to donate all their other clothes—or most of them, at least—having lost their fear of needing something and not having it, in which case that's all well and good.)

So anyway, I have decided to become a minimalist, though I'm sure I'm using the term so loosely most the bloggers I've been reading would barely recognize it. I am bothered by how much stuff I have. Excess stuff sitting around distracts the attention and weighs on the mind if it's visible, but even if I manage to keep all my junk nicely hidden away, it still takes up psychological space. I know it's there. It's like I feel responsible for it, for caring for it and managing it. Plus I still have to cart it around every time I move, which I have done 13 times in the past seven years (counting moves to and from college each year, to Oxford, to Marburg, and my annual moves since). I have to spend a lot of time sorting stuff, picking it up, moving it around, putting it away, etc. So I definitely want to have less stuff—much less stuff. And, as I said, I want everything I have to be something I like having and use regularly. I'm tired of feeling obligated to my stuff. It's entirely irrational. Just because I've owned a thing for six years does not mean its feelings will get hurt if I get rid of it! Just because I paid $50 for a thing does not mean I'm getting my money's worth from simply having it sitting around for two years any more than I would if I just got rid of it. Just because my eccentric aunt gave me a thing does not mean she really thinks it's something that should be a central part of my life (at least I hope that's not her intent or she's much more eccentric than previously thought), and she probably won't give that thing one thought after she gets my thank-you note, so it's pointless feeling obligated to keep it around.

I decided a reasonable but definitely doable challenge would be to get rid of half my stuff. This presents me with a conundrum as well, however, as I definitely don't think just chucking everything into 20 trash bags and putting it out on the curb is a legitimate way of dealing with things. Of course it's easy to just tie things up and cut them out of your life in one fell swoop, but I feel like doing that isn't deliberate enough and just leaves you open to letting more stuff come in to fill its spot. Plus, obviously, it's no more responsible to fill the landfills with your things than to fill your house with your things, so as much as possible, things need to be actually dealt with. So clothes and books and things should obviously be sold or donated, but what about all that stuff? One thing I realized lately is I have a gallon bag full of 3-ounce toiletry bottles from traveling. I have recently found an amazing travel toiletry set, however (the bottles are all like 0.5 and 1 and 1.5 ounces so you can take small amounts of like 12 things instead of 3 ounces of like three products, of which you generally only use a third or half each), so I'm never going to actually use any of these for traveling again. So, yes, I'm going to spend the next month or so using up tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner and such at what I am sure will feel like an agonizingly slow pace. But this reduces waste, and, perhaps even more importantly, it forces me to be mindful of my purchases, to attend to the lifespan of each, to find a way to release them from my life naturally. I'm guessing (hoping) this will make me less likely to mindlessly acquire new things, since I'm aware of what a pain it is to deal with them. If you buy something knowing that when you're tired of it, you'll just throw it away, then money is pretty much the only impediment to acquisition.

Which brings me to another important topic. Obviously just eliminating half of my possessions won't solve the underlying problems. That's like getting extensive liposuction: great, the fat's all gone, but if you don't change the way you eat and live, it's going to creep back. My hope is that I'm actually undergoing a significant enough change in the way I think about possessions and consumerism and such that I will be able not to simply justify buying tons of new stuff since now I have the space because I did such an amazing job clearing stuff out. To a certain degree, I know this is true. Over the past few years I think I've actually managed to recalibrate my sense of disgust (disgust is the most powerful motivating emotion) so that things like fast food and big hunks of meat and piles of shiny new toys actually vaguely disgust me. This should be very helpful, since if I find mindless consumerism and acquisition disgusting in others or in principle, presumably I will at least think twice about doing such myself. It's an added hurdle, which in this case is to my benefit. However, of course, I am fighting against a quarter-century of some pretty powerful social conditioning and DNA full of pack rat tendencies. So we'll see how that goes.

Anyway: so I'm getting rid of half my stuff. I set January first as my goal date to be done. It's like a special bonus resolution that will have me already feeling good about myself on New Year's and will thus hopefully serve as the impetus to get a move on whatever resolutions I end up making then. This also gives me two and a half months, which I'm hoping will help with the mindfulness part that I mentioned before (I'm pretty sure calm, rational, deliberate culling over time is far superior to one fell swoop, as it has the best chances of actually getting habits started and getting me used to looking at everything from that perspective) as well as give me time to consume things like those travel-sized toiletries and hopefully at least some of my 14 types of hair products. (Note: I use between one and three hair styling products on any given day. In any given month, I probably use four max. But, like everything else in my life, as my tastes change, I just keep the old stuff and acquire new stuff (repeat, repeat), and then I have like five times as much as I actually need.)

So, how am I measuring? Being the kind of obsessive person I am (the challenges mentioned at the beginning really do appeal to exactly my brand of crazy), I'm taking an inventory of every single bit of stuff I own, listing it out, counting it, and then aiming to end up with only half that number by the end of the year. I'm not trying to halve each category of stuff; some categories (papers, random crap in boxes under my bed) should be eliminated almost entirely, while my 430 books are probably going to be lightly pared at best. Why? Because that's the way I want to do it. Because my books make me happy and are a psychological boost while the boxes of junk under my bed are a psychological drag that I constantly feel like I need to deal with.

I spent the last day and half or so (on and off) making my list. I just went clockwise around my room, cataloguing in a Word document all the stuff that was on each surface or in each box or drawer. (I have some stuff in the kitchen, bathroom, and basement, but those were all pretty easy to do.) And yes, being obsessive, I wrote everything down in excruciating detail. A partial list from my kitchen (the least embarrassing segment, I'm sure):

sifter

one set measuring cups

two sets measuring spoons

pastry cutter

small silicone mats (2)

electric mixer

strainer

white plastic bowl with lid

small springform pan

silicone muffin cups

small cutting board

medium cutting board

scoop cutting board

cookie sheets (2)

large plastic storage containers (2 rectangular, 1 square)

grippy things (3)

veggie scrub brush

kitchen towels (2)

vegetable peelers (1 normal, 1 palm-held)

cheese slicer

can opener

garlic press

plastic bin for compost

toaster oven

blender

food processor

toaster

waffle iron

mini George Foreman

The final list was 16 pages long. (Just the one column per page, but still!) And what counted as an item? I wasn't entirely consistent. Each plate, bowl, etc. was counted separately, but "utensils" were one item. Pens and markers were each enumerated, but "file box and files" was one item, "2 xmas boxes I didn't feel like opening" were only one each, and "pile of papers" was an item each time one was encountered. The bag of toiletries previously mentioned was only counted as one item.

And—the big reveal—I am the not-so-proud owner of 2,762 and a half items. This was way more than I was expecting. Of course, little things—or well-organized things—add up quickly even though they don't take up a lot of space. For instance, I own 66 and a half pairs of earrings (um, yeah), but they take up about a quarter of the small half-drawer at the top of my chest of drawers. My 430 books fit—with extra room, even—on two Ikea Billy bookcases that take up exactly six square feet of floorspace.

That being said, I was horrified by a lot of categories. For instance: 104 pairs of underwear. What?! And of course I only wear like a third of them on anything approaching a regular basis. Actually, yeah, clothes are most of what appalled me. Seven swimsuits (four of which don't even fit). Twenty-two bras that are too big for me (!!), not counting the ones that fit (of which there is some subsection I actually wear). [I feel the need to defend myself. I have lost a lot of weight, in fits and starts and with fluctuations, over the past two years. So this, like several other areas of my wardrobe, reflects a good three- or four- or five-size range. And bras aren't cheap, so I held on to them in case I gained ten pounds back again or whatever. No need to give things away for free and then spend $100 to replace them in three months! However, this is actually ridiculous (they were in four locations, so I didn't realize I had held onto that many), so I'm getting rid of all but a couple. Plus, holding onto fat clothes is one of those big no-nos if you read dieting articles, because then it's like mental permission to get lazy and creep back up again. I'm not sure I buy that entirely, but whatever, it's a consideration.] Sixty-nine and a half pairs of socks. (Thirty are white tube socks or ankle socks that I actually do wear regularly, and that are actually often the limiting factor in determining when it's laundry time. Fifteen are knee socks, which, yeah, are not. Six are fuzzy house socks, which I'm pretty sure I did not myself purchase a single pair of. And obviously the lone, unmated sock is doing nobody any good.)

Then, on the other hand, are the seeming excesses that I don't think actually are. (There are few of these, by which I basically mean this one.) I own 11 black tank tops, 8 white tank tops, and 6 gray tank tops. (Also 39 others, but that's not the part I'm justifying.) I really do wear almost all of those frequently. The white ones especially are essential to wear under all sorts of less-than-opaque or low-cut tops. I actually have three of the same white tank top because I kept having to fish it out of the hamper because I always needed it again before it got washed.

But yeah, I'm appalled at myself. Thirty percent of my belongings are items of clothing, and that's saying a lot, since I started this mostly concerned with the proliferation of just random junk. If I got rid of all the junk and kept the clothes, they would probably be around half. Ridiculous!

Stay tuned. Over the next two and a half months, I've got to figure out not only which 1,381 items get to leave my life forever but exactly how I'm going to manage that. Also hopefully I'll have some great insights about how not to replace those items with thirteen hundred of their close cousins.

I feel accomplished already, and I haven't actually done anything.

Oh, right. The title is lyrics from "Living in America" from Rent.

Black-hole Decision Making

I find myself faced with environmentally framed decisions which I feel completely ill-equipped to make. It's hard to make a rational cost-benefit determination when you can only guess haphazardly at what those costs and benefits might be, or at least their exact measures. How am I supposed to make decisions on no information? For instance:

1) The bathroom, kitchen cabinets, and fridge in my new apartment are full of half-used toiletries and food belonging to previous residents already departed. Whenever I can waylay both of the other current residents more or less simultaneously, we're going to cull the collection. Obviously the environmentally (and fiscally and otherwise, I suppose) responsible thing to do would be not to simply throw everything out but to spend the next few months living off the two varieties of Herbal Essences shampoos (extra moisturizing and anti-frizz, both of which, conveniently, my hair could benefit from), the duplicate bottle of my face wash, and the myriad body washes left behind (and eating lots and lots of soy sauce and mustard?) so as not to allow huge quantities of perfectly good products to go to waste. And I likely will do this (at least for the bathroom supplies—using an unseen person's leftover shampoo seems a lot less gross than their leftover food, plus the food stuff isn't stuff I'll eat, or at least not quickly enough for it to benefit the stuffed level of the fridge with any alacrity).

But then what to do with the unwanted dregs? I'm a compulsive recycler (I've been known to fish roommates' bottles out of the trash, rinse them, and put them in the bin), but I know that the plastic recycling process isn't actually all that efficient, that the water wastage required in rinsing out a container (especially one containing body wash or something that foams seemingly eternally) is a nontrivial factor in this equation, and that—oh wait—washing loads of liquid pollutants (which is what toiletries basically are when you get down to it) down the drain where they eventually end up contaminating rivers and groundwater and such probably isn't the best of ideas. So, do I simply toss the whole thing—bottle, contents, and all—into the trash, hoping the bottle will remain intact enough to keep the contents from spilling out into our (eventual) water supply, and not wasting the water to endlessly rinse it, or do I spend an afternoon rinsing out bottles of Worcestershire sauce and conditioner, wasting untold gallons of water?

See, what I need to know: Exactly how inefficient is plastic recycling? (I'm sure this is publicly available if I really looked.) How much water is required to rinse out a shampoo bottle? (I'm sure I could figure this out on my own.) But then, how much water wasted counteracts the beneficial effects of recycling? (This is possibly close enough, given the inefficient nature of plastics recycling, to be significant.) What are the environmental effects of pouring bath products down the drain? (I am aware we do this daily anyway as our daily doses of shampoo, conditioner, face wash, body wash, shaving gel, toothpaste, mouthwash, and whatever gels, pomades, or mousses are already in our hair wash out and down the drain, but just because we already do it to some extent doesn't mean it's a problem. Peeing out all the drugs we take is doing awful things to fish, frogs, and other animals, including leaving them hermaphroditic thanks to 12 million American women's birth control pills.) Does anything thrown away in its container actually remain contained after being crushed and compacted and tossed in the landfill?

2) Since I always use my flip & tumble bags at the grocery store, CVS, etc., I'm finding that I actually have a dearth of paper and plastic bags around my house. In my area, paper recycling has to be either put into a paper bag to separate it from the other recycling, or tied neatly into a coherent package with twine. The latter sounds nigh impossible (only a small percentage of my paper recycling is regularly-sized and -shaped paper—what to do about all the receipts?!), but it seems beyond ridiculous to be sure to get paper bags at the grocery store for the sole purpose of restraining my paper recycling. (This is less a cost-benefit thing than just an annoyance thing.) Until recently I was making it by on the occasional Whole Foods bag the roommate would bring home (he's slightly less perpetually armed with reusable bags since he doesn't carry a purse), the small bags his beer comes home in, and then (a windfall!), somewhat embarrassingly, a stash of paper bags I filched out of a neighbor's recycling bin one day. But now? Nothing. I appear to be the only person in this apartment who cooks, so apparently I'm the only one who ever buys anything at the grocery store. (Odd.)

Plastic gives me an even worse conundrum. The other day I went to empty the bathroom trash, but then I realized I didn't actually have any plastic grocery bags to replace the bag with. (I would just dump the trash into the kitchen trashcan, leaving the bag there, but our toilet has a weird leak that the trashcan has been living under to catch, so everything was kind of soggy and gross, and the bag actually needed replacing.) So when I went over to the old place to swap out some stuff I'd unwittingly taken for some stuff I'd unwittingly left, I also grabbed a substantial portion of the stash of plastic bags we had accumulated over the past two years in our kitchen closet. (Of course, over half of them are the somewhat less conveniently sized bags that you get when you buy clothes or something somewhere slightly fancier than the grocery store.) But someday, these too will run out, and then what? It's ridiculous to buy trash bags, at least for that size trash can. (Seriously. How thoroughly stupid is it that stuff is manufactured—and we spend money on it—the sole purpose of which is to throw away?!) But again, is it much less stupid to refrain from using my reusable bags once or twice to build up my supply of plastic grocery bags to line the trash with?

3) Composting brings me to a problem in a similar vein. I had decided once I moved I would resume collecting my vegetable peels and such to take to the compost dump. (Another point entirely is that the compost site is only for residents of my old city, but that I live much closer to it now that I've moved across city lines. I'm going to just do it anyway, since I only composted for maybe two months of the time I lived there, so they owe me a good thirty-odd months of accepting my food waste on principle. Not that they check resident status at the entrance...) But I refuse to simply use my plastic bin unlined by anything else, because as the waste accumulates, it liquifies, starting to smell and leaking putrid liquid in my bag as I carry it. So here we are again—I can line with a plastic bag, which I not only have a dearth of, but I don't enjoy doing because then I'm still stuck with the now-disgusting bag to dispose of later, or I can line with a paper bag, except I don't have any of those either. Is it better or worse to purchase paper lunch sacks to contain the veggie refuse (introducing waste, including water waste in the manufacturing process) to prevent all my biodegradable waste from entering the landfill, where it is no longer to actually decompose due to lack of oxygen and thus absence of the bacteria that break it down? (An apple core only rots measurably faster than a styrofoam cup when you bury them in your backyard for science class, not when you throw both of them away—shrouded in a plastic bag, no less!—to enter a landfill.)

Gah, I need numbers! I need data! (Better yet, I need someone else to gather the numbers and data and make a nice little website telling me what to do!)

My other option—and don't think I haven't already done this to some level on light-waste weeks!—is to sneak my paper to be recycled into an unsuspecting neighbor's under-stuffed paper bag. I'm pretty sure that's technically illegal, though, not to mention embarrassing if I they catch you. And it doesn't help with my bathroom trashcan!

This is Your Planet...This is Your Planet on Trash

Recently I visualized the problem with the environment (landfills particularly) in an entirely different way that kind of traumatizes me. I've been feeling a push lately to simplify my life and get rid of tons of junk that's just cluttering my space, but I feel guilty throwing things away because I know they'll sit in landfills for millennia. But then I realized that if they'll survive for millennia, they'll survive for millennia whether they're actually in a landfill or not. As far as the earth is concerned, our houses might as well be mini-landfills. Once stuff enters the world, it's there, and it doesn't really matter what you do with it afterward (unless it's recycled, but even that isn't entirely a pollutant-free process), it's trash. It's not like something magically happens to your junk when it enters your trash can that converts it into this mysterious "garbage" thing; it is what it is, and that thing is likely polluting the earth, or at least taking up space on it.

Once you remove the human angle of looking at things and ascribing worth to them and just try to look at it all from a purely physical point of view, it's pretty depressing. Our factories work day and night to pump stuff into our landfills with brief pauses in our houses. My mental image is of a planet (like when they show Earth on kids' TV shows with obviously too-big houses and proportionally giant people and such as a dramatization) devoid of people but with big buildings sticking up off of it filled with stuff, stuff, stuff. So really, the point isn't even what to do with all our stuff when it comes time to dispose of it, as if that's when it enters the waste stream, but whether to bring it into existence in the first place, since once it's here, it's part of the waste stream. (This is why "reduce" comes first in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra, something that people too often forget.)