Translating Recycling Lessons

I spent a year of high school in Harare, Zimbabwe, and a few years after I returned to the U.S., my friend from Zimbabwe came to visit. One day, I took her on a shopping trip to the mall. At the first store, she bought something and was presented with a shiny plastic bag to carry her purchase home. We went on to another store and when she had completed her purchase, she was presented again with a shiny plastic bag to carry her purchase home. With a puzzled look, she asked me, "What is this for? I already have a bag." At each subsequent store, the same thing happened and she continuously refused to take another bag, reusing the first one. We could have ended up with a collection of a dozen shiny plastic bags, but instead she used one. At the time, it had been a few years since I had lived in Zimbabwe, and I had already become wrapped up in U.S. consumer culture. I had so quickly forgotten the lessons about reusing and recycling that I had learned during my time in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, the first recycling lesson I learned was at school. All students were assigned notebooks to use for the semester. With these books came a list of rules:

1. Do not rip out any pages or you will not be given a replacement notebook.
2. If you make a mistake, cross out the mistake and continue on the same page.
3. Do not apply for a new notebook until you have used every page; the pages will be counted and examined to make sure every page was used wisely.
   

This was all in the interest of saving paper. I wrote an essay for my English class on one of these assigned notebooks, and I left the standard one-inch margin on the right and left sides of the paper. My teacher responded in the space on the right, "What is this space for? Well, I guess I can use it to make witty comments." At the bakery, the baker would hand out fresh bread on a thin slice of paper rather than, as in the U.S., a loaf wrapped in two layers of plastic only to be placed again in a plastic bag. People would put the trash out to be collected and the garbage collectors would empty the plastic trash bags and leave them behind. Then people would wash out their used trash bags and reuse them. Pop can tops were recycled to make the mbira, a traditional finger piano; pop cans were used to make toys. Little was wasted.

More recently, these lessons I learned in Zimbabwe were reinforced by living in Indonesia. The family that I lived with in Indonesia reused everything. If shoes had a tear in them, they were taken to a small shop to be sewn back together. Rather than throw old underwear away, my host mother would take the old elastic out of her children's underwear and replace it with new elastic. Old shirts became towels or rags to clean the house; no paper towels in sight. Banana leaves or old newspapers were used in the market or fast food restaurants instead of the throwaway cup, straw, napkin, paper wrapping, and bag used here at McDonalds. Bathing in Indonesia consisted of pouring water over your body, soaping up, and then rinsing off with a few cups of water. This used much less water than a twenty-minute shower.

Now I am back in the U.S. and trying to find a way to translate the recycling lessons I learned and not slide back into my old habits. At the Cosmopolitan Club, we recycle paper, glass, and cans. I try to bring old clothes to the Salvation Army rather than throw them away. But I still have the temptation sometimes to eat at McDonalds with all its waste; and shoes are so cheap in the U.S., it is easier to throw them away than to sew them back together. Is it possible to avoid getting caught in the culture of consumption here? Does it really matter if only a few people are thinking about reusing and recycling in a society where consumption is the norm? I will continue to try and live by the lessons I learned and hope that it does make a difference.