Can We Learn From Wild Critters?

One of the interesting things about animals is that they refuse to live in their own filth. Momma dogs keep their puppies clean by eating the feces that their pups excrete. Older dogs try to avoid excreting their wastes in their living areas, however modest they may be. Cameras set up in bird’s nests show that momma birds collect their babies’ wastes and toss them outside the nest. Gorillas go to great lengths to keep their environment clean. The list of animals who keep their families healthy by their practices in dealing with waste goes on and on. Humans haven’t learned this lesson.

 

Sadly, too many of us believe the entire world is our wastebasket; from smokers who treat the streets as giant ashtrays, to undisciplined children and adults who throw trash out their car windows. The wastes that humans create foul our air, pollute our water, despoils our landscape, and has the capability to make us sick as we are constantly assailed by harmful chemicals of our own making. Notwithstanding those who don’t believe in science, there is no possibility that humans can long survive without dealing with the waste that we create. This lesson became apparent when humans first began living in cities and were forced to deal with excrement being tossed out upper story windows.

Although that problem is mostly solved, the general problem of waste disposal has become more severe as technology has enabled the creation of more and more products that ultimately become waste. Our solution to this growing pile of refuse has been to collect it and hide it somewhere, in hopes that no one will notice. Of course, it is a fool’s errand as you can see if you travel anywhere along our freeway system and notice the landfill-mountains that belch methane in an otherwise flat terrain. Inside the mountain is waste from our generation. Most of it will lay in wait for our children and their children to deal with, since only a small portion of it will be biologically converted to methane or something else.

The obvious answer to this growing problem of fake mountains is to recycle waste into useful products that can be re-used. Not a new idea, but one that seems to be taking hold very slowly. Recycling is a worldwide objective. Many nations around the world are better than we in the U.S. in dealing with this issue. We are better than Greece, Ireland and the UK in the percent of waste that we recycle whereas most of the rest of Europe are superior to us, especially Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Luxemburg. I saw recycling containers in Sweden 30 years ago in a McDonalds franchise, but we can't seem to manage them in U.S. franchises.

                                                    To Recycle or not to Recycle ?

 

But, we are getting better. Studies indicate that around 60% of all waste can be recycled and our current practices in the U.S. recycles 28% of our garbage, nearly doubling what we achieved a mere 15 years ago. We can do better. New York and other states in the east are recycling at a rate of around 40% while Alaska, Wyoming and Montana manage to recycle only around 9% of their refuse.

Recycling has many benefits beyond reducing pollution. Glass recycling provides an example: Recycled glass is always part of the recipe for new glass, and the more that is used, the greater the decrease in energy used to make new glass, thus lowering its cost. As energy needs are reduced, so is the pollution that results from burning hydrocarbon fuels in the glass furnaces. One ton of carbon dioxide pollution is reduced for every six tons of recycled container glass used in the manufacturing process.

Glass containers for food and beverages are 100% recyclable. In 2013, 41.3% of beer and soft drink bottles were recovered for recycling. Another 34.5% of wine and liquor bottles and 15% of food and other glass jars were recycled. In total, 34% of all glass containers were recycled, equivalent to taking 210,000 cars off the road each year. Unfortunately, in my area of northern Michigan we don’t have recyclers who will sort and use colored glass for recycling.

States with container deposit legislation have an average glass container recycling rate of just over 63%, while non-deposit states only reach 24%. Also, beverage container deposit systems provide 11 to 38 times more direct jobs than curbside recycling systems for beverage containers. Every state should have deposit programs like that Michigan implemented several years ago. Why shouldn’t our nation lead instead of follow in this important area?

It seems like such an easy thing to do. If muskrats can manage to keep a clean nest without harming their environment, why can’t we?