Master Recycler Urges Reducing and Reusing Before Recycling

By Esther Lerman Freeman | Contributing Writer

Living in Northeast Portland, most of my neighbors are committed to doing what they can to improve our environment and keep Portland and the world healthy. Since I had been recycling, composting and donating to The Community Warehouse, The Rebuilding Store and other reuse organizations for quite some time, I thought I knew everything; that is, until I participated in the City of Portland Metro’s Master Recycler Program (MRP).

Developed in 1991, MRP is a partnership between Metro, three counties, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and lay community members. MRP educates community members on best practices for recycling in Portland while also providing a workforce for community initiatives. There are three courses held annually and each is eight weeks long.

Upon graduation, MRP students are asked to spend time sharing what we learned, and through this column I hope to fulfill that obligation.

I will start with the number one thing that I learned.

The program should be called How To Bring Less Stuff Into The World rather than Master Recyclers. The first words from the instructor were, “Reduce and reuse BEFORE recycling.”

The very active Buy Nothing Group in our community is an example of folks trying to share with one another rather than supporting consumption. I watch as Buy Nothing members share extra food, clothing and lend one another items to use. They truly embody the Reduce ethos.

In terms of physical and financial effort, reducing is quite easy; it takes no resources to “not buy”. It does, however, take psychological energy. I often spend time scrolling through online offers that have found their way into my inbox.

Luckily, these companies usually have a cart on their websites that I can fill to my heart’s content until I wake up from my hypnotic consumer state and am able to just walk away from them. It is an experience of shifting from thinking wouldn’t that be nice? to do I actually need that?

However, sometimes you really do need to buy something; like a pair of waterproof pants for a hiking trip. In these instances, consider whether it is something you can borrow, something you can buy secondhand, or if you indeed need to buy it new. Taking the time to go through this thought process means you will have done the the first part of your basic training; going from automatic pilot to considering other options.

When we recycle, we are still not compensating for the energy and materials that went into producing the article. We get some return savings of energy and materials by recycling, but only a small percentage of what would be saved if we did not produce unnecessary things in the first place. A good example of this is food waste. While I have tried to be careful about not letting any food go to waste, I have always felt OK about it because at least I can put spoiled food into the green compost bin. Again, even though recycling food waste separately decreases the volume of waste at the dump and decreases the methane gas emitted from the dump site; the amount of labor, water, earth, and energy that went into growing and producing this food is not recovered by composting. So composting is great, but not wasting food is even better.

Tips for this month:

1. Before you buy, ask yourself if you need it. Can you borrow it? Can you buy it secondhand? If the answer is that you do need to buy it, go ahead, knowing that you have considered the options.
2. When buying food, consider using a shopping list and planning your meals for the week. Pay attention to what is most perishable in the refrigerator and keep it in the front of the shelf to increase the chance of using it before it spoils.
3. Freezing is a great option to save food that is in danger of not being used before it goes bad. Cutting up fruits and vegetables and freezing them is easy and saves money.
4. The ends of carrots, beet greens, the stems of mushrooms, etc., are all great to keep in the freezer until you have a good amount and then make a delicious broth, which is free! You won’t need to pay for broth and you won’t have any packaging from the broth to dispose of.
5. Find a neighbor you can share food with so that when either of you overshops or overcooks, you can help each other make meaningful use of the overage.
6. The type of food we eat also impacts the environment. One doesn’t need to become a vegetarian to decrease the impact of their diet, but perhaps cutting out one or two meals of beef a week would be a start.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Next month’s article will focus on REUSE.

Esther Lerman Freeman is a certified Master Recycler and Concordia resident.