Garbage In, Garbage Out - a journey to less waste

This is a post about garbage. Yep. And at the end of this post I've made a long list of stuff I've done to reduce our garbage output. But I can't make a list without a lot of editorializing, so here goes. :)

I'd venture to guess that most of us don't think about our garbage. But lately I've been doing a lot of consideration about that very topic. And I've become convicted that all of us need to be more mindful of the level at which we trash the world.  The average U.S. citizen throws out four and a half pounds of garbage every day. That makes 230 millions tons every year, just here in the U.S.!

It's a huge disappointment that Christendom, which should be a haven of care and respect for the physical creation, seems to be the least interested crowd.  Somewhere along the way, Christians got the idea that since the world is fallen and going to be fixed up someday anyways, we can do whatever we like to it in the meantime. (It's funny that you don't hear that argument being made about human bodies.) The first thing lost in that train of thought is the biblical concept of stewardship. Just like it's wrong to pollute our bodies with excessive smoking/drinking/poor eating, it's also wrong to rampantly degrade anything that's been entrusted by God to our care.  Something else to consider: creation has been entrusted with displaying God's attributes.  People understand God through the physical world, and that's no small entrustment. So creation is no less a part of God's master plan than humans are. Humans and the rest of physical creation have the same destiny (renewal), and should be treated with similar honor.

One last thing: forget what politics has to say. Party politics has (ill-)advised us on this issue for too long.

Here's a huge pet peeve of mine, considering how I think believers should behave: churches produce SO MUCH TRASH. The amount of styrofoam and paper and plastic dishes used even at one event is, frankly, embarrassing. A typical Sunday morning might produce hundreds of styrofoam coffee cups, each used for five minutes and thrown "away." There are alternatives that I think churches need to consider. First, attendees, bring your own reusable mugs for the coffee. Churches should be encouraging this, and also offering normal (non-disposable) mugs for those who didn't bring their own.  Also, at group eating events like potlucks, let's wean ourselves off the throwaway plates, forks and cups (which are flimsy and tacky anyways).  If it's a larger group, another option is for each family to bring their own regular plates and flatware to the church potluck, and wash them later at home. This is actually the way get-togethers were done in the past, when we did not buy things for the purpose of throwing them away.  This idea might sound a little nuts, but that's because we've been infected by the culture of throwaway. If you actually think about it, it makes much more sense. I'm pretty sure people from 150 years ago would think we're nuts (and more than a little wasteful) to have so many things intended for one time use, and immediately discarded.

I Hate Exercise

I don't make a secret of the fact that I can't stand exercise. It makes me miserable, pure and simple.  I don't mind exercise in disguise, which some people call tennis or two-hand-touch-football or ultimate frisbee.  As long as I have something else to distract me, I can forget for a few moments that running, jumping and making my heart beat quicker aren't a) fun, or b) any fun at all.

What is it about exercising that so many people seem to like? Runners especially! Every runner I have ever seen seems to be having the most miserable time of their life. They are red and sweating, their clothes are hanging funny all over them, they can't get water in their mouth accurately, and they have horrible, painful grimaces on their face. When I ask runners how and why they run, they say "It's not so bad after you get used to it. It feels good to push yourself."  True, or I could take a razor blade and run it in between my toes every day, really push myself, and maybe eventually it won't hurt so badly.

I need to do some kind of physical activity though, but I feel so dumb that I have to think about it, and even dumber that I am considering paying for it by signing up for a gym membership. Feeling dumb makes me wish I lived some place, some time, where "exercise" wasn't ever thought of; I would just do my daily activities and get physical activity in the process. The idea of a gym is grimly amusing to me, for one because I would be paying money to be in misery. Plus, if you think about it, it's pretty silly to pay for something as free as exercise. And it's hard to get excited about hanging out in a shrine to a pampered, overfed, sedentary culture where most people (um, myself included) will accidentally get too fat if they don't go and burn it off on purpose.

There is also a great, delicious irony here.  So many of us have these easy-peasy lives now, with desk jobs and automatic everything. We are told these are improvements (and of course, many are). Except that now, because all our hard work is done by machines, we have to spend time in the gym on a different kind of machine, sweating away the extra time we've been given by technological and industrial advances.  It's hard to beat that for irony, eh?