[permaculture-oceania] stay rosy

[jedd]

On Sunday 02 July 2006 9:58 pm, Russ Grayson wrote:
 ] The food co-op I am a member of says no - they refuse donations of used
 ] plastic shopping bags that clearly could be reused before being finally
 ] discarded.

 I'd be curious what their rationale is for this policy. 

 ] Many people, on the other hand, reuse plastic bags before the
 ] appearance of holes or soiling renders them unusuable, whereupon
 ] they are commonly discarded to the bin (and landill). 

 Absolutely.  Despite all the complaints about plastic bags, they
 are the most re-used of all disposable plastic items, even if only
 to package up the rubbish (which beats buying new plastic bags
 for the same purpose).  This, and the fact that they constitute less
 than 2% of the disposable plastics we generate & use, makes me
 wonder why they're the target of such vitriol.

 I suspect it's because they're such an obvious example of one aspect
 of The Problem -- they provide a clearly visible point of commonality
 for discussion, though I suspect many of the Deeply Concerned don't
 see it this way, and are unaware of the statistics regarding them.

 I'd speculate that your co-op may have this aspect at the top of their
 list of reasons to not accept them -- it just encourages people into
 thinking plastic bags are okay.  Or, from the other side, refusing
 to use these items encourages people to think about related subjects.

 But not everyone who *believes* petroleum products are going to
 run out soon .. have divested themselves of their cars.  Similarly,
 not everyone who believes that coal power plants are bad avoids
 having a cup of tea on a dark, still night.  I find the attitude
 a smidge naive, partly because it doesn't scale, mostly because it's
 incongruous given the other attitudes implicit in 'their' behaviour.

 ] Here's the philosophical dilemma: does reuse of already-discarded products
 ] or those (like water bottles) designed for single use constitute a practice
 ] that, in some way, could be regarded as contributing to 'sustainability'?

 The concept of sustainability is grossly misunderstood by most people,
 but to their credit, most people grossly misunderstood most concepts.
 In this particular case it's not helped by the obvious ambiguity of
 the word, or rather, the other words that usually wrap around it.

 My believe is that yes, it's sustainable insofar as the rest of the
 world continues to operate in the current fashion -- ie, if you define
 the system to include the waste-producing components that generate
 the input to this 'sustainable activity'.  If you define the system
 borders to extend only so far as to encompass the process of re-using
 already discarded products, then, of course, it's not sustainable.

 It's dangerous ground, though, because you are ineluctably led to the
 conclusion that, for example, using photovoltaic cells, wind farms,
 tidal power, hydro schemes etc -- none of these are sustainable ways
 of generating electricity.

 Corollary -- is a slinky on an escalator a form of perpetual motion?

 Jedd.