"Why There Isn't Waste"
Susan Hubbard
Sunday, February 3rd 2008

My talk today is titled – “Why There Isn’t Waste” but first in all fairness you should know…I do not have faith that there is not any waste – it is true that I used to be a believer but I am not anymore. On the contrary, I have actually learned that there isn’t any waste – I’ve experienced it. I’ve contemplated it and I know it. And it has changed me – it has changed my mind. It is powerful and some people call it knowledge. Knowledge…. maybe, but definitely not faith. I call it experience.

I do not hope that there isn’t waste and I really do not hope that you hope there isn’t waste. But, if you wanted to, I’d love for you to experience it.

Why so down on hope? Here is the thing about hope – it doesn’t sustain you. You get burnt out – cynical, when you hope and hope and hope and it doesn’t happen. At Eureka Recycling we practice – hopelessness. We try to go deeply into our mission to demonstrate that there really isn’t waste but we aim to do it without the conviction that this will turn out well (that is to say without hope.) Rather we dive with a conviction that, as far as we can tell…it is the best thing we can do - regardless of how it turns out

So– my thoughts about how there isn’t waste.

Waste…is Like Hamlet to be or not to be… My experience…the only thing that really is to be or is not to be – is choice and the precious opportunity to choose. And even that doesn’t fix the outcome –

I have made a choice to waste a day and then thought – that was the best use of a day I ever made and then only a few days later when I am very behind on my should do’s - regret it - yes regretting the same best day.

Friends say they have wasted years of their lives in relationships but when they look back they can recall some of the best events of their lives (like having children) were encapsulated in those same wasted years.

I have seen perfectly good apples fall out of trees… apparently wasted – unless I suppose you are a worm or some such and live in or near that dirt.

So waste – technically speaking (and here is where I can count myself among waste professionals) is a concept. I myself have written several statutory definitions for waste but that was back when I was a hoper and believer...before I had any experience.

Waste doesn’t exist – it is a concept. It only occurs when things are unwanted or undesired – if things are wanted they stop being waste and once it is unwanted, again – waste.

At Eureka we spend a great deal of our time -watching people change their minds about waste – including our own minds–

Like when we tell folks how much we will pay for their discards (we prefer discard as it reflects a choice and not the inevitable…waste) At Eureka - we often experience that there is an economic paradigm that impacts whether or not we perceive waste – we have no allegiance to our operating economic currency. Don’t get me wrong we are not a trust fund kids - at Eureka we have 80 or more employees …it is money in and money out…a real nail bitter - we play the game but we don’t buy it…so to speak.

Experience tells us not to buy. Here is one example; the Free Market (a web based program we offer) is used by 1 in 9 households in the metro area. Free stuff is listed – people value this garbage are they crazy? It’s free it doesn’t have a value – the folks that get rid of it are glad to get rid of it. It is just a pile of waste...in their minds.

In Minnesota, – 56% of what we discard BURN OR BURY has an economic value that is worth 231 million dollars.

Another 25% or so could be composted into soil that would increase the value of our crop production and reduce the production and application of pesticides and fertilizers that are petrochemical products –

Yes we make fertilizers because we destroy the materials that nature would have naturally transformed in to the very thing it came from – dust to dust, so to speak.

And we subsidize destroying the materials and this creates carbon and methane and increases our footprint. And, in Minnesota we call trash biomass - a renewable energy.

Tax dollars tens of millions of dollars every year are used for these subsidies just in the metro area – we do this. When I say we I mean the big we – not the evil doers we can point at – that is unless we are in front of a mirror.

Conceiving of trees as discards – basically toilet paper, in North America we have accidentally made the value of our recycled paper quadruple in 2 decades. People ask us at Eureka if we are happy because paper prices are so high…I wonder how do we conceive of waste as we watch our forests – especially our old growth forest completely disappear under the burden of our currency.

We are so afraid of the discards that we have put in our water that we dare not drink it. We discard billions of plastic bottles every year – only 1 in ten water bottles get recycled. With less and less petroleum to make plastic and more and more demand - the value of recycled plastic bottles is at a record high. We subsidize the resources that make plastic and then we subsidize the incineration of these plastics. The incineration creates a fraction of the energy in burning as we used to create them. The emissions include the deadliest that humans have ever made. This is our valued currency

So where do we start – here at our places of worship – and doing more at home – pushing it a little more at work. Can you conceive of St Joan of Arc being waste free? What would we give up and what would we get? A big step into composting food and non-recyclable papers is amazing – now there is good conception. Maybe better conception is to stop composting paper SAVE A TREE, bring a plate or cup from home? Then build a compost bin for food scraps and use them in your gardens here. Reduce the emissions from the truck that will have to come and pick it up the dumpster full of our food and paper waste.

Okay, one step at a time. Being content with your efforts is important but …(and I am not an expert here) I think being satisfied with waste is probably a sin.

By creating experiences of no waste – by taking the compostable part of our garbage out of our waste as you are at this church people can see the bottom of their trash can or what is in the way of the bottom and shifts are occurring. They stop buying the things that can’t be recycled or composted – It is true you’ll start looking in your compost dumpster and reducing that too – you’ll be unstoppable.

Waste is just an economic concept that has no compassion and no validity. You can analyze and challenge this yourself and you have to if you really want to change it – it has to be your own experience. Start small -

We make choices

We make mistakes

We make money

We worship

We prefer

We desire

We value

We see potential

We abide in peace

We make waste

There is no such thing as waste that endures without us

There isn’t any waste – make an experience of no waste for yourself – one day, one mass, one cup of coffee, one church, one city, one life…

So, sadly like Hamlet’s concept of his own life - our discards are so vile that we cannot bear to live with them so we hope they can be forever banished into nothingness. But, like Hamlet we know deeply that the vile will appear again. In the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land that nourishes us, the children, fish and animals we love. Everything we hold as sacred will be imbued with this mistaken concept – one simple lack of recognition of the true nature of things

– there really isn’t waste.