recycle, reuse.... does it reduce?

After watching the two videos on trash, I was shocked at how little I really understood about recycling. The idea is great, but its effectiveness is only relative and in many cases has a tragic outcome that is only found if you are looking for it. To reduce our waste, it is going to take more than separating paper and plastic into containers when we throw out our "trash." Its going to have to mean using LESS OF IT; "it" being man-made materials that realistically only humans can reuse, and creating more "trash" that is of natural/biodegradable components that can re-enter the circle of the revolving ecosystem of our planet.

Unfortunately, my idea of recycling has changed, and while in my mental dictionary it no longer has a positive connotation, it is none the less more accurate and true to its nature. Recylcing simply means re-using.
That is it.
It does not mean reusing ALL of something, or even re-using that object in the best way possible. It does not mean that there is less "waste" involved, in fact, the movies show that sometimes it can be harmful to re-use the things we throw away and just makes more waste in lots more little pieces.

The contrasting points that the videos had complemented each other visually and metaphorically. The first video about recycling gone wrong has visual elements of clutter, of piles and piles of rubbish and small scraps of unwanted objects. A visual picture of how much we end up not using in our consumption loving economy.
The second film is just the opposite, with gaping wholes of places where humans have become greedy and taken so much from the earth that we can change the topography of the land. Large empty spaces that were once untouched are now somewhere else, somewhere "unnatural." (probably in those big piles)


It is like comparing an obese person to a starving person, neither of them are good because they lie at both extremes, and one inevitably causes the other. Didn't our parents teach us to share? I guess we dont consider nature one of our friends.

Shopping for Food

Talking to a farmer versus talking to a grocery store employee is like talking to your mother and talking to your twice removed seconds cousins mom whom you've never met.
The farmers know everything about what they are selling because they tend to be more specialized, they know best about there product because there isn't as many different things that distract them from their attention to detail. They were friendly and give you samples, which I think is a strategy that says, if you don't believe me that mine is better, see for yourself, and it always is.
While a grocery store is "convenient," its employees and its products show the affects of big businesses and more steps between the food and the consumer. The grocery store employee I talked to was doing the job not because they loved or cared about food, but just to make money. It was not the job that they "dreamed of" or were passionate about, and therefore while being very friendly and a good customer service worker, the position had little to do with the products they were selling.
In whole, buying directly from a farmer makes you feel good because you know you are supporting a hard worker who sells honest products, while buying from a grocery store is so distant and there is no personal connection with the person who is taking your money.
My parents always said that getting a home-made card means more, no matter how it looks, because it is always better, and I think the same goes for food.
Farmers market food may not have the poster board consistency and perfection, but it has more personality, flavor, care and thought when going from the ground to my basket.

Kale

A hearty winter plant that seems to thrive in the cold, kale is a popularly known to be very healthy but not so tasty. Apparently, however, with increasing temperatures the plant leaves become sweeter, something that is always appealing to our taste-buds. It contains calcium, Vitamin C and K, lutein, and helps prevent vision loss with age.
Traveling to the outskirts of the campus was a delightful bike ride. Once at the Mondavi center, I easily found the gardens and was pleasantly surprised at the size of the garden in relation to the space it occupied between buildings. Why didn't all office buildings have gardens in their courtyards? It was just as beautiful as any other botanical garden I have seen, but it also looks great year round since planting can be seasonal. So even now in the winter, things are beginning to creep up out of the ground and provide food to the surrounding community.

I would highly suggest this Mondavi center garden as an example of combining beauty with function for other locations that have a similar layout or any open space, but also for others to visit it and enjoy what is there now and appreciate the progressiveness of our school.