Every year, Earth Day spurs volunteers to clean up the beaches and renews everyone’s faith in recycling. Now, I know all you Malibuites are recycling like crazy what with curbside pickup and all, and the California Redemption plan has provided the incentive necessary to keep soda cans and bottles off the streets and out of the storm drains. As an unintended consequence, it also seems to have given homeless folks a way to make a buck and tidy things up in the process.
With my TV turned off all last week, I almost missed Joanne Woodward’s spots on recycling, which remind us that it’s equally important to buy post-consumer recycled products and things packaged that way. It was a major reminder that I’ve been contributing more than my share to the waste stream lately.
If you’ve ever remodeled your house, you realize the construction industry has missed the point entirely. Every time the plumber or electrician comes to change out an old toilet or heater for a new one, they whisk away all the detritus into their trucks. If their pickups are full, and I’m not watching, they stuff whatever fits into the condo association dumpsters. When I ask them what they do with the stuff they haul away, they’ll say, “We just BFI it.” I discovered BFI is the contract refuse hauler for the area, so it all winds up in the landfill.
Last week, the local lumber company delivered my new kitchen and bath cabinets. When the installers finished screwing everything to the walls, there were 14 cardboard cartons left. I asked if they would be recycled. “Nah, we just BFI ’em.” They thought I was nuts when I said I’d prefer to break them down and haul them in my Saturn to the community recycling bins. No trouble, I say. After all, I’ve already dragged off about two-dozen boxes from Pottery Barn. It even makes me feel guilty to trash the packing peanuts and Styrofoam.
Actually, construction workers just don’t get it. They’re taught to clean up the work site but not to recycle the trash. Every year, a bazillion tons of ancient electric heaters, light fixtures, broken toilets, leaky sinks, water heaters and worn out coffee pots clog the nation’s landfills. But part of it is our fault. When they say, “Do you want us to get rid of this for you?” We say, yes, without asking. It’s not easy to get rid of a tattered couch. Slipcovers or new upholstery would be the green choice, but in most cases it’s more expensive than buying new. My friend once put a shraggedy sofa out at the curb thinking it would soon disappear. It didn’t. A week went by. It was still there, a blight on the landscape. Then he put a sign on it advertising “Couch for Sale $100 or Best Offer.” It was gone the next morning. Creative recycling.
The current issue of Natural Home has a feature on finding a contractor whose environmental commitment you can trust. It suggests: Reduce quantities of building materials, resources and energy; Recycle materials as much as possible; Use renewable building materials; and Reuse structurally sound construction materials. At what point do I give up patching crumbling wallboard? I’ve used 10 pounds of FIX-IT-ALL smoothing cracks and plugging holes, and the wind still whistles through in spots.
Sometimes it’s really hard to buy green, and stay within a budget, and get the thing done before you die of old age. Something as simple as paint becomes a big deal.
Now we’ve all pretty much given up on oil based paints but even acrylics off-gas chemicals. Benjamin Moore has a Low VOC water based paint but not many stores stock it. Finding old-fashioned milk paint and other Zero VOC paints is best done on the Web (at milkpaint.com and bioshieldpaint.com). They’ll send you a catalog, but matching colors from a photo can be a challenge. And don’t forget, you can’t just throw away old paint cans. I left the lid off an old can so the remaining paint would dry out. It was still liquid after a week when it dawned on me that every night dew and frost was getting it wet again. Duh. Anyway, even though building green can be frustrating, it’s worth the effort. I just didn’t allow enough time for research. And since I’m not great at arguing with contractors (they’re so good at intimidating women), I’ve done it on my own with the help of the maintenance supervisor, who probably also thinks I’m nuts, but has the decency not to say so.
Meanwhile, I’m just reusing everything with a spec of life left in it, donating furniture and appliances to Habitat for Humanity, and touching up the walls with the old paint left behind by the previous owner. Now if I could just figure out what to do with all those damn packing peanuts.