Waste Not

The New York Times Magazine Sunday was largely devoted to articles about environmentally sensitive design, including an article about Shigeru Ban , whose ecological designs include elegant and useful buildings out of paper (from emergency shelters in Rwanda to a paper church now ten years old), and an interview with William McDonough about his obsession with renewable energy systems and recycling waste.

The article on Ban is headlined "Waste Not: The Accidental Environmentalist." Both the content of these articles and that title remind me of a position I've long espoused: that basic ideas behind "environmental design" and energy-saving processes are completely in line with some traditional practices and ideas. Some are simply traditional processes with fancy new names.

Years ago, when Pennsylvania was adopting its mandatory recycling plan, the editorial firm I worked for in Pittsburgh was responding to a Request for Proposals from the state government on how to effectively publicize the program. I developed the basic framework of a campaign that attempted to show that "recycling" was really a traditional idea with a new name and a larger purpose. To communicate that idea, I proposed using the Benjamin Franklin dictim of "Waste Not, Want Not" (which I thought would make a good reggae hook). Franklin was also the most prominent Pennsylvanian among the Founding Fathers.

Around that time I wrote an oped piece for one of the Pittsburgh dailies predicting (contrary to its official editorial opinion) that Pittsburghers would recycle with few problems. My reason was similiar: the immigrant frugality of just a few generations past in this very traditional and ethnic city would make this a common sense concept. And "recycling" in order to further a larger goal was also familiar from efforts during World War II to help the war effort.

We came in second to a much larger Philadelphia advertising firm on the recycling contract, but I was right about Pittsburgh's response to recycling. In fact, the willingness and even eagerness of people to recycle has been an unheralded success story almost everywhere.

For our grandparents and even our parents, it was simply common sense to reuse, reduce waste, and "recycle". You don't throw away socks when they get holes; you darn them. You don't throw old clothes into the trash--you tear them up for rags, which you use to clean. Though these attitudes would be ridiculed in the consumer "throwaway" society, they remained dormant but alive. "Waste not, want not" was a rule of survival, and it had a certain elegance and satisfaction to it at well. It was part of a traditional way of life that people seem to be paying a lot of money to emulate these days.

All that "waste not" requires is removing the stigma, the idea that it is shameful not to waste ( because it is a sign of being poor and therefore a failure.) That's the role of leadership and institutional support. It's how recycling happened, and it is a procedure that in general will work in other areas, such as energy efficiency, in addressing the climate crisis.