CLOSE on the heels of Earth Hour celebrated every end of March and just before World Environment Day, which is every June 5, is Earth Day traditionally marked globally every April 22 to advocate for the protection of the environment. Personally I believe that it is good to have more events that enable us to be mindful about and focus on the environment; one can never have too much of that commitment.
A lesson I learned early on was this: that the environment suffers from the evil twins of resource depletion and pollution; and that therefore we should strive to address both.
Perhaps due precisely to the cumulative effects of environmental education, there is growing awareness of the importance of the 3Rs of solid waste management, the aspect of pollution that is very evident to most of us – many would be able to name them as reuse, reduce and recycle.
The 3Rs of solid waste management will only work when supported by waste segregation. Without the ability to sort through and classify, it will be challenging to figure out which item can be reused, reduce or recycled, which could explain the tendency to just discard all waste.
I find though that the 3Rs are inadequate in terms of the intention of reducing waste towards overall environmental sustainability. A more fundamental R is needed – the rethinking of lifestyles that drive our consumption and acquisition, particularly for those of us who live in urban and rapidly urbanizing areas. This rethinking also impacts on the resource base, as consumption patterns do not just drive pollution. They obviously also impact on the utilization of natural resources.
My own advocacy is to expand the response options to consumption and acquisition and to approach it in a systematic manner, indeed to make a series and sequence of decisions following a decision tree. This rethinking-oriented decision tree will allow the investigation of the following options: refuse, revise, reuse, reduce, recycle, (energy) recovery and redistribute.
The examination of choices begins with posing the question “Do I really have to obtain this product or service? Can I opt to refuse to have it without deleterious effects on my wellbeing?” A refusal has the effect of preventing the increase of wastes that come from consuming a product or service.
Should we find ourselves saying yes to a product or service, it is still prudent to ask the question “Is there an alternative to this product or service that is more environment friendly? Can I revise or rework things so that availing of product or service will neither deplete nor pollute the environment?” This response has a waste prevention aspect to it.
Our use can still be managed with deliberate efforts to scale down the size of our carbon footprints in an age where everything is upsized; hence the question “Is there a way to reduce my consumption?” If waste cannot be prevented, then at least it should be minimized.
Once something has been consumed or used, the suite of questions now concern what to do with residue – “Do I have to discard it already? Can I still breathe more life into this by reusing it?” and then “Can this product become something or part of something else that is useful? How can I recycle it?”
There are those who advocate recovering energy from residue rather than disposing it. Some also say that instead of just burning solid waste (which is illegal by the way under the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act), the energy in it can recovered by using it as fuel.
I think our options should not stop with being able to manage waste though. If we are to step back and examine all that we have accumulated, there is one more question to ask and decision to make “Which of the things that I have now can I let go of? What I can redistribute?” We think of waste as the by-product of stuff that we have used, but how should we regard the things that we have not made use of? Aren’t they “wasted” in the sense that their potential use and benefits have not been harnessed?
More than an approach to the things that are external, the decision tree applies to our inner worlds as well. Which thoughts or feelings do we refuse entry into our inner spheres? Which notions should we reduce or have less of? What are the positive and affirming beliefs that we can reuse again and again? How do we recycle or rechannel specific energies so they take on new and more useful forms? What lessons can we still recover from all the energies we invested in undertakings that did not bear fruit? And which passions should we redistribute by sharing with and passing on to others?
And similar to the earlier point made about segregation, we need to hone our abilities to sort through and classify what goes on inside our inner worlds.
The conversation one has to make with one’s self about the waste management decision tree is something that has to be done everyday until it becomes a matter of course, a habit. If there are enough of us who rethink and refuse, revise, reuse, reduce, recycle, do recovery and redistribute regularly then the pollution levels in our external and internal environments will go down. And we can also anticipate positive changes in the state of our external and internal resources.
The point being that the world outside of us and inside us is not shaped by once a year grand events and gestures (even if they happen in a series) but by that thing you do, we do, everyday.
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